JAPANESE POLITICS:The failed candidacy of Yuriko Koike for leadership of Japan's ruling LDP focussed attention on the levels of sexism in Japanese society, writes David McNeill
THEY ARE, in some ways, sisters bonded in struggle: tough, no-nonsense natives of Kobe City who have blazed a path through the murky, male-dominated world of Japanese politics. But nearly two decades and an ideological gulf separate the fortunes of Yuriko Koike and Takako Doi.
In 1990, when today's rising political star Koike was just another pretty face on television, Doi's career arc was peaking. Charismatic, popular and famously unmarried, the then leader of the Socialist Party was tipped to become the nation's first woman prime minister. Scandal, failure and political obscurity followed. Few Japanese under-30 remember her.
Now, as Koike butts her head against Japan's famously thick glass ceiling, the question on many lips is: will she have better luck? The answer for now seems to be no. The former television anchorwoman electrified a moribund competition in September with a long-shot bid for the presidency of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), pitting her against its old guard, led by Taro Aso. Inevitably, perhaps, she failed, but some believe her day will come. She has already been dubbed Japan's Margaret Thatcher.
Few doubt Koike's abilities. A foreign policy expert who speaks fluent English and Arabic, the 56-year-old quickly won the confidence of Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's most successful recent prime minister, after she joined the LDP in 2002. He made her environment minister in 2005 and his successor, Shinzo Abe, put her in the key post of defence minister.
That rapid rise through the grey ranks of the LDP was made in a political establishment heavily weighed against her gender. Japan ranks a lowly 102nd in the world for female representation in parliament, according to the Swiss-based Inter-Parliamentary Union. Just 89, or 12 per cent, of Japan's 722 Diet members are women. Two out of 17 of prime minister's Aso's new cabinet are women. New finance minister Shoici Nagawa gave an interview with the Daily Telegraphlast year in which he stated: "Women have their proper place: they should be womanly . . . they have their own abilities and these should be fully exercised, for example in flower arranging, sewing or cooking.
"It's not a matter of good or bad, but we need to accept reality that men and women are genetically different."
Outside the halls of political power, life is even tougher. Women occupy just 10 per cent of Japan's managerial positions, says the United Nations' Organisation, compared with 42.5 per cent in theUnited States, and they make up fewer than 1 per cent of Japanese chief executives, compared with 23 per cent in Sweden. Those figures are shamefully low, argues Mitiko Go, president of Tokyo's prestigious Ochanomizu University. "Obviously this is not good enough," she laments. "We have to do better."
Even academic life, traditionally a haven for ambitious, clever women, appears to block them from senior management. Although roughly the same >>universities. Just 7 per cent of Japan's 750-odd colleges and universities US>United >And while four out of the eight members of the Ivy League now boast female presidents, none of Japan"s top academic institutions has ever allowed a woman to rise to the top. "Most professors select male students when considering a research successor," says Mrs.Go. "They subconsciously think -, 'Oh, if I choose a woman she"ll just get married and have children.'"
is female, although most have undemanding jobs in the service sector, often to supplement falling family incomes. On average they are paid one-third less than men. Those tiny few who climb to the top find life very lonely. "The grassroots is changing, but the top of the political and business world executive>>
>ex-television>executive>>Many in the company accepted that a woman boss would help boost its image, but the accountants blocked her plans to change Sanyo's corporate structure as "too feminine,", she recalls."I was told that the company's problems could only be solved by a >modern veneer, Japan is still hierarchical, sexist and rigid, a product of history in which change came from above. "The Japanese mentality is obedience to the top, even if the leader is very stupid," she laughs. "On modernis>mentality>mentally >
But Yuko Kawanishi, a sociologist at Tokyo Gakugei University, also blames Japan's modern corporate culture, which drains men and women of the energy to fight for change. "Men work so hard and women are forced back into accepting traditional roles in the family," she says, adding that more than two-thirds of Japanese women stay at home after having their first baby. The odds against returning to work on the same pay as men are "enormous.".
>non-profit environmental group called the Gaia Initiative. An old friend of >that the two were approached to run in politics by everyone from the >television>->recommendation - and began a long tour of Japan's political parties before landing in the conservative LDP.
For some women, that was an odd choice and will do little to advance their >the decision of her Socialist Party to enter into a disastrous if short-lived coalition with the LDP in the mid-1990s. "A politician who champions an agenda such as gender equality wouldn't survive in the LDP," Japan's first openly lesbian lawmaker, Kanako Otsuji, warned last month.
Top-heavy with older men, despite a post-Koizumi influx of talented females, the LDP has only recently and grudgingly accepted that women have a role outside the home, a philosophy underlined by a steady stream of sexist gaffes. Last year the hHealth mMinister Hakuo Yanagisawa sparked outrage when he called women "baby-making machines" in a botched attempt to talk-up Japan's plummeting fertility rates.
Former leader Yoshio Mori once condemned the government for paying social security benefits to childless women. Even mild-mannered ex-Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, as chief cabinet secretary in 2003, made a comment suggesting leniency for rapists. None paid with their jobs.
Still, Koike's candidacy was welcome for one reason, believes Nonaka." But she says it can only be the start of a major change in Japanese past been made by men. Why not women? Women have to repair this sick Japanese society. If women are not happy, the future will not be happy either."
