Despite Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s historic win, the proportion of women running in Japan’s upcoming general election has barely increased, falling far short of government targets.
TOKYO: The proportion of women running in Japan’s general election next month has barely advanced, reports said.
This is despite a trailblazing win last year by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
A record 24% of the 1,285 lower house candidates who kicked off their campaigns were women, according to the Asahi Shimbun and other media.
The figure is just one percentage point up on the last general election.
The government set a goal in 2020 for 35% of lower house candidates to be women by 2025.
A new target has yet to be announced.
“The inauguration of Prime Minister Takaichi doesn’t appear to have sparked a strong movement within the LDP to significantly increase the number of female candidates,” politics expert Yuki Tsuji told AFP.
The proportion of women candidates within Takaichi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is just 12.8%.
This is down by more than three percentage points since the last election, Jiji Press reported.
Tsuji noted the opposition isn’t highlighting the presence of women as a party advantage.
She said the sudden dissolution of parliament last week “left little time to carefully select and field candidates”.
This could be “the main reason why the number of female candidates hasn’t grown much”.
The party with the highest proportion of women is Sanseito, which has women as around 43% of its candidates.
Despite promising “Nordic” levels of representation, Takaichi named just two other women in her 19-strong cabinet.
Women remain rare in Japanese politics and boardrooms.
The country ranked 118 out of 148 in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Gender Gap Report.
Takaichi’s views on gender place her on the right of an already conservative LDP.
She opposes revising a 19th-century law requiring married couples to share the same surname.
Political science professor Yu Uchiyama said Takaichi is famous for her conservative stance.
“It is unlikely that she will devote her energies to such policies” like promoting diversity, equality, and inclusion, he said.
