Miura Mari: The Fight for Gender Parity

This guest article from Miura Mari is part of the Asia program’s Women’s Voices from the Indo-Pacific Project. John E. Merow Senior Fellow Sheila A. Smith features influential women in Japan’s political, economic, and social fields.

I attended an all-girls junior and high school, and only upon entering Keio University, one of Japan’s most competitive universities, did I encounter the social pressures associated with gender. I felt like I was being asked to show my femininity, to act like a “good girl,” and at the time, only 15 percent of the students in my faculty of law and political science were women. The experience led me to eventually pursue graduate study abroad in the United States.

I entered university immediately after the enactment of the Equal Opportunity Law, so many of my senpai,  female students in classes ahead of her,  would become the first generation of women to enter the workforce in positions previously open only to men. I watched as many struggled in the corporate workplace and even dropped out of the managerial track in Japanese companies. Gender roles were so embedded in Japanese companies, with too narrow an opportunity for women. I was not able to imagine how I could survive in Japanese corporate culture. So, I decided on an academic career.

A Comparative Frame on the Japanese Labor Market

I entered graduate school at Keio University but went on to study in the United States. When I arrived at the University of California at Berkeley in 1993, I felt quite liberated. No one cared if I was a woman or a man, a foreigner or an American citizen. I was interested in comparative politics and advanced industrial economies. At the time, my research focused on the welfare state and labor market policy, and while I did not think of this as research on gender, it did, in the end, have implications for gender equality.

I included Japan in this comparative study, and at the time, Japan had little in the way of welfare protections compared to Western Europe. However, employment protections were strong in Japan, yet when I looked more closely at Japanese regulations, women were always treated as secondary, whereas men were granted full protection. That is, there were two labor markets in Japan—one for men and one for women. This became the core of my dissertation, which characterized the Japanese welfare state as “welfare through work.”

After my dissertation, I began to look at family policy and gender relations within the family. The labor market and family are, of course, two sides of the same coin. Issues related to gender equality policies, work-life balance, and family policies, including violence against women, all shape the policies that shape women’s lives in Japan. It was then that I understood how thin the legal foundation of gender equality is in Japan. There are few laws that protect women’s rights or promote women’s participation in the labor market or protect women’s equal opportunity in the workplace. Japanese courts have rejected a woman’s right to retain their own name when they marry.

The Need for Women as Decisionmakers

This scholarship led me to shift my focus from the political analysis of gender equality policy to women’s political leadership. There are remarkably few women in decision-making roles in Japan. In the Diet, only 10 percent of Lower House members and 26 percent in the Upper House are women. This is lower than the international average and reflects the dynamics of Japan’s party politics. In our parliamentary system, it is the party that selects candidates, and the process by which candidates are chosen is opaque. It is often called a “secret garden.” The largest party and the party that ruled Japan for most of the postwar era, the Liberal Democratic Party, did not consider gender equality in its platform. Within the LDP, women make up only 8.6 percent at the Lower House and 16.8 percent at the Upper House.

Local bosses dominate local campaign headquarters, and they tend to pick their favorites, who are mostly men who were born and raised in their districts. Access to campaign resources is also dependent on these longstanding (and often familial) networks, and women have far less access to them. Moreover, gaining the support of voters requires a 24/7 effort, including attending various celebrations, festivals, and evening drinking sessions. In other words, candidates must sacrifice their private lives for politics, leaving no room for many women who have families.

Yet, in local assemblies, Japan has done better. Urban areas have done better than rural areas. In Tokyo’s metropolitan municipalities, 36.8 percent was the average ratio of women among those elected in 2023.

More rural areas, however, have far fewer women in politics. About 40 percent of Japan’s municipalities have only one woman or no women at all. In such areas, there are often not enough candidates for public office. All candidates are then automatically elected without an actual vote. This problem requires a fundamental reform of the electoral system to rebuild democratic infrastructure.

Another dimension of Japanese politics also makes the barriers to entry high for women. Political dynasties enjoy electoral advantage because such families have already established solid support in their districts. For them, politics is a family business, and usually, it is a son who succeeds his father. Japan’s patriarchal family system hinders women from inheriting the seat. But at the same time, without such family connections, it is extremely difficult for conservative women to get an endorsement from the LDP. About half of the LDP’s female Diet members are actually second and third-generation politicians.

Recently, Japan’s political parties have seen the benefit of getting more women to run and serve in the legislature. In 2015, a parliamentary group was established to look at how to change the gender balance. I was an academic advisor to this group and advocated for establishing a quota system for Japan. I co-edited a book about gender quotas around the world and their outcomes. It was the first academic book about gender quotas in Japan. As an advisor, I shared the variety of quota systems used around the world, but it was difficult for the parties in parliament to reach a consensus. Instead, they passed a gender parity law in 2018 (Act on Promotion of Gender Equality in the Political Field). It established a legal norm that all parties should aim for gender parity among candidates they field for elections. While it is not binding, and there are no penalties for a lack of parity, it is nonetheless significant that gender parity in candidacy became a legal norm.

The law encourages political parties to set numerical targets for candidates they would endorse. Most opposition parties set a target of 30–50 percent and in 2023, the LDP finally set a target of 30 percent by 2030 for their Diet members. The law has thus changed people’s expectations, and Japan’s media now report on the number of women candidates in each election. This introduced some accountability for gender equality in Japan and changed the awareness of all Japanese about the need for women to participate more fully in governing Japan. As a result, women candidates often outperform male candidates. This changed the parameter of candidate selection. Political parties are now more serious about recruiting women, as they now know that it is electorally rewarding.

Harassment and Gender Equality

In 2021, the law was amended to include a provision that elected assemblies have a responsibility to prevent harassment of women. I had argued strongly for this in my role as advisor. Harassment from voters is serious in Japan, and stalking is a prominent danger to women candidates and elected representatives. Some local assemblies have created ordinances to prevent sexual harassment, provided seminars and other ways to inform the public, and hotlines for reporting harassment against women politicians. While there has been greater awareness and, in some localities, greater protections for women who seek to enter politics, a broader issue is the lack of a national anti-harassment law. So, without this legal framework to criminalize predatory behavior, political parties, and localities must take this on themselves.

Attitudes are changing in Japan. The Me Too movement has made people far more aware of the hurdles for women across professions. A prominent legal case by a female Japanese journalist who was harassed by high-ranking Japanese officials also highlighted prevalent journalism norms, such as meeting after hours or at bars, which encourage inappropriate behavior. Furthermore, the Japanese are very aware of the low score Japan receives in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index. In 2023, Japan’s ranking was 125 of 146 countries.

Now, it seems that remedying Japan’s gender equity performance has become a national goal. Bureaucrats, politicians, and journalists all talk about how to close the gap. More women are needed in parliament, and the wage gap across sectors for women needs to be reduced. We need women leaders in business and the media, as well. Cultural expectations in Japan seem to have shifted, but it remains to be seen whether the reality of reducing barriers to women across Japanese society will follow. Picking one or two women to be on boards, or in the cabinet, or to be the face of a media outlet is not enough. That only leads to tokenism. The real result will be a change in the power structure.

Training Women for Public Office

A colleague and best friend, Ki-young Shin, and I realized the need for greater female participation in politics and wanted to encourage more women to run for office.  We visited the United States to meet with organizations providing leadership training for women, including Emily’s List, Harvard University, Rutgers University, American University, Running Start, and She Should Run. In 2018, we set up the Academy for Gender Parity and invited leadership trainers from Washington, DC, to our first three-day camp. This was just after Japan’s Gender Parity Law was enacted, and so we attracted many applicants. It was interesting to see that they were not just younger women but also women in their forties and fifties who wanted to enter politics. Many of our participants then ran for office and won. This was heartening to many women who followed. We run these camps every year and have received support from the U.S. Embassy for programs in Osaka-Kobe, Fukuoka, and Sapporo.

To run in national elections requires the support of a political party, and so this is a hurdle for our effort. However, at the local level, many candidates run as independents and thus do not have an endorsement from our national parties. This makes it much easier for women to run for office at the local level. In our last local election in April 2023, twenty of our alumni ran for office, and seventeen won. We also have one national Diet member who is an alumna. We are doing quite well!

Our training focuses on helping our women understand how to campaign in Japan. We also help them with practical advice on how to raise funds for their campaign and help them with public speaking. Public speaking is quite daunting for our participants as it is not something that most Japanese have experience with. I also learned from the U.S. training programs to focus on the three C’s: confidence, capacity, and community. We focus on team building, and we have them play different campaign roles, such as a campaign manager, a fundraiser, and a candidate. Our women participants have been quite creative. They have also challenged some of the ways that male campaign managers try to project a candidate’s image. For example, male candidates are told never to use an umbrella when it rains, as that does not make them look strong. Women, of course, would not respond well to that advice!

We find that women are often active participants in local activities, including the PTA and other community organizations. Yet they do not see that as similar to politics or connected with politics, so we help change their perceptions of their leadership potential in public office.