It was a move designed to show that Japan’s ruling party was committed to gender equality after the sexist dispute that forced one of its former prime ministers, Yoshiro Mori, to resign as chairman of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.
The time has come to give women members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) more prominence at important meetings, said party secretary general Toshihiro Nikai this week, days after Mori resigned after his claim that meetings attended by “talking women” Tended to “drag on”.
But Nikai’s attempt to address the huge gender gap in his party quickly faded when it became clear that the small groups of women present at the meetings were expected to be seen but not heard.
The LDP, which has governed Japan almost unchallenged since 1955, has proposed allowing groups of about five women to attend meetings of its 12-member council, 10 of whom are men, on condition that they remain silent observers.
The proposal was ridiculed on social media and by opposition parliamentarians. “Male chauvinism and discrimination against women are always part of the LDP,” wrote a Twitter user.
Nikai, a powerful faction leader who supported Yoshihide Suga to become prime minister last fall, defended the proposal, according to which observers would be allowed to send their opinions to the council secretariat instead of speaking. “It is important to fully understand what kind of discussions are going on,” Nikai, 82, told reporters. “Taking a look – that’s what this is about.”
Nikai allegedly made the proposal the day after Tomomi Inada, a former defense minister campaigning to raise the status of women parliamentarians, suggested that women could attend important party meetings. Last year, Inada called Japan a “democracy without women” after Suga appointed only two women to his office.
“Women represent half of Japan’s population and 40% of the base members of the LDP,” she said. “If women do not have a place to discuss the policies they wish to approve, Japan’s democracy cannot fail to be partial.”
Japan’s gender problem is reflected in the composition of its lower house of parliament, where only 9.9% of parliamentarians are women, well below the international average of 25.1%, according to the Interparliamentary Union, the global organization of national parliaments. In addition, Japan’s global ranking on gender parity placed it 121st out of 153 countries in the World Economic Forum 2020 report, 11 places below the previous year and the largest gap between advanced economies.