Japanese women want more representation in politics, but few are running for office

Japanese women feel there is inadequate female participation at all levels of domestic politics, according to a new survey, although very few are willing to challenge that statistic and run for office.

A survey by the Nippon Foundation of 10,000 women between the ages of 18 and 69 found that 62.2 per cent of respondents believe that women are under-represented in national and local-level politics, with the figure rising to nearly 70 per cent among those educated to university level or beyond.

Some 63.7 per cent of those taking part in the survey said it was necessary to increase the number of women in politics, a figure that dwarfed the 4.9 per cent who said there was no need for more balanced gender representation in decision-making chambers across the country.

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Japan does have a number of high-profile female politicians - Yuriko Koike is the popular governor of Tokyo, Yoko Kamikawa serves as justice minister, Seiko Hashimoto is Olympics minister and Renho Saito is the former head of the opposition Democratic Party - but the overall numbers are low in comparison with other countries.

Women account for around 10 per cent of the politicians in Japan's lower house and 20 per cent in the upper chamber, while the figure in prefectural assemblies is slightly over 10 per cent.

According to the United Nations, the global average of women in national parliaments stands at 24.3 per cent, with Rwanda topping the list of female politicians with more than 61 per cent. Regionally, 19.8 per cent of politicians in Asia are female, while the figure climbs to 28.6 per cent in Europe and 30.6 per cent in the Americas.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike Photo: Kyodo

And while at least 10 nations presently have female leaders, including Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh and Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, no woman has ever come close to being prime minister of Japan.

Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University who has studied female representation in Japanese politics, welcomed the findings of the Nippon Foundation survey.

"This is both very interesting and very encouraging," she said. "I think there are several reasons why women do not play a larger part in political life in Japan, although the biggest single issue is the deeply held perception that it is very much a male-dominated world.

"Like elsewhere, politics in Japan can get very nasty and the criticism is strong, meaning that a lot of women are intimidated about stepping into that sort of arena. It's not nice to be exposed like that and it has an impact on a woman's personal life."

Women who are willing to enter politics often have to adapt themselves and "act like the men that they are around", Murakami said, to be accepted.

"I also think there is still an old-fashioned attitude among some voters, particularly those in rural areas, who would ask a female candidate why she is not at home cooking for her husband and raising the children," she said.

Those beliefs were supported by the Nippon Foundation survey, in which 34.5 per cent of women said they believed it would be difficult to balance the life of a politician with raising a family, while 34 per cent said "politics is for men". Others replied that women who might be tempted to go into politics have too few inspirational role models to encourage them.

On the other side of the equation, political parties have not traditionally gone out of their way to invite women to represent their policies to the electorate, even though women make up more than half of the Japanese population.

And while nearly two-thirds of the women responding to the survey expressed a desire for greater political representation, just 2 per cent said they would be keen to stand for election. A further 6 per cent said they had "some interest" in running for office - meaning that 92 per cent had no political ambitions.

Murakami is not particularly optimistic that there will be significant change in female representation as long as older, conservative-minded men still control the levers of politics here.

"I would hope to see change, but the present leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party shows few signs of welcoming more women into the cabinet," she said. "Perhaps the most effective way of having more women in the Diet would be to introduce a binding quota system.

"That might be difficult, but the election of [Joe] Biden in the US might have an effect as his administration has a large number of women and Japan, in comparison, looks rather odd. Maybe that will change some minds."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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