Companies and businesses of all size in Japan are hiring and promoting women left and right. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has aggressively promoted gender equality in the workforce under the banner of “womennomics.” Due to Japan’s shrinking population, women are needed more and more to contribute to the country’s growing industrial output. Women still hold only 8 percent of business leadership positions in Japan, compared with 21 percent in the USA and 14 percent in Germany, and the dichotomy is a major problem at some firms. For example at Toyota Motor, 48 of the 49 top executives and board members are men; at Japan’s #1 bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the top management is all male. Part of this problem is due to century old business policies in Japan such as lifetime employment and age-based promotion. The American firm Goldman Sachs says that closing the gender employment gap in Japan will boost that country’s GDP by 13 percent. At the large package-delivery company, Yamato Holdings, 35 percent of 200,000 employees are women, but only 3 percent of the managers are women. However, even at that company, attitudes, expectations, norms, and work-life issues are changing rapidly to assimilate more women from top to bottom in the workforce of all Japanese institutions, businesses, and companies.

Source: Based on Eleanor Warnock, “Japan Fights Gender Gap at Work,” Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2015, B1.