Japan's overwhelmingly male cabinet underlines gender gap, again

By John Geddie and Sakura Murakami

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's new prime minister appointed only two women to his 20-strong cabinet on Tuesday, down from five previously, in what a rights group said represented a "backslide" in Tokyo's push for greater female representation in politics.

New premier Shigeru Ishiba, who held off a challenge from a female rival to lead Japan's ruling party last week, picked Junko Mihara to take charge of children's policies and Toshiko Abe to oversee education.

A quarter of the previous cabinet of outgoing prime minister Fumio Kishida, who resigned in August partly due to a series of party scandals, were women, including the key post of foreign minister. That matched a record also reached in 2001 and 2014.

But that well below female representation seen in other Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies amid questions about a commitment by Japan's ruling party to raise the number of its female lawmakers from around 10% to 30% over the next decade.

"Going from five women cabinet members, which was already extremely low, to two, is a reflection of just how far Japan has to go in terms of women empowerment and equality," said Teppei Kasai, Asia programme officer at Human Rights Watch.

"In terms of the representation of women in the political arena, it's a clear backslide."

It remains to be seen how many female candidates the LDP will field in a snap election due on Oct. 27.

The main opposition, Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, announced a record eight women in its 20-strong shadow cabinet on Tuesday.

Despite the lack of women in Ishiba's cabinet, Kasai said he hoped the new premier would push ahead with more socially-progressive policies such as a campaign pledge to introduce a law that would allow married women to keep their maiden names.

Sanae Takaichi - who became the first woman to make the run-off in Friday's leadership contest - is a hardline conservative who opposed changes to the surname rules and was relatively unpopular among women voters, according to polls.

Yet her achievement in nearly reaching the top in Japan's male-dominated, traditional society should not be underestimated.

Japan ranked 118 out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum's 2024 gender gap report, up seven spots from the previous year but still the lowest among G7 countries.

The contrast with its G7 peers was on show in 2023 when Tokyo sent a male representative to an otherwise all-female meeting on women's empowerment in the Japanese city of Nikko.

Japan has had three women as foreign ministers but never a female finance minister or prime minister. Tokyo elected its first female governor in 2016.

Women make up around 10% of lawmakers in Japan's lower house, well below the average 30% across the Group of Seven advanced economies, according to a 2024 report.

The LDP hopes to nearly triple its proportion of women lawmakers to 30% in the next decade through steps such as offering babysitting arrangements and a fund to support female candidates.

Asked at a press conference on Monday how the LDP planned to implement this in the upcoming election, its newly-appointed election chief Shinjiro Koizumi said the party would "resolutely push on", without elaborating.

(Reporting by John Geddie and Sakura Murakami in Tokyo; Editing by Kim Coghill)