Nothing surprising here, but it is good to remind the Japanese as well as the non-Japanese what a male-dominant society Japan is, especially with respect to business. It’s great to profile the two Japanese women who sit on boards of directors of companies in Japan, but it’s glaringly sad that there are only 2. Here is another chicken/egg problem; without more female role-models, there’s little chance for more women to want those positions.
A survey released in October by Corporate Women Directors International, a U.S. nonprofit organization that promotes the participation of women on global boards, found Japan ranked at the bottom of the list among nations with female board representation at Fortune Global 200 companies.
The survey mentioned a third woman board member at Nippon Life Insurance Co. But Shigemi Kanamori, whose name sounds female, turned out to be a man. That translates to less than 1 percent representation.
The United States led the list with 17.5 percent of board seats held by women. All 78 U.S. companies in the Global 200 have at least one female board member, led by grocery store chain Albertson’s Inc. with 50 percent female representation.
Japan Corporations Lag in Promoting Women [news.yahoo.com]
Is it reasonable to assume that Japan will improve in this area in the near term? Boris will no doubt be made ill by my remark, but it’s a pretty deep-seated cultural thing, isn’t it?
I don’t know that on average Japanese womanhood, based on training in subservience to a certain extent basically since birth, can overcome such barriers in the immediate future.
I think it will take a few generations before this works itself out, assuming that there’s enough rabble-rousing and so forth to drive it.
cdg