The chill in Japan over women rising.
TOKYO — From a young age, Satomi Hayashi studied hard and excelled academically. It seemed only natural that she would follow in her father’s footsteps and attend the University of Tokyo, Japan’s most prestigious institution.
As soon as she was admitted, her friends warned that she was spoiling her marriage prospects. Men, they said, would be intimidated by a diploma from Todai, as the university is known in Japan.
When she arrived three years ago, fewer than one in five undergraduates at the university were women.
The dearth of women at Todai is a byproduct of deep-seated gender inequality in Japan, where women are still not expected to achieve as much as men and sometimes hold themselves back from educational opportunities.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promoted an agenda of female empowerment, boasting that Japan’s labor force participation rate among women outranks even the United States. Yet few women make it to the executive suite or the highest levels of government.
The disconnect starts at school. Although women make up nearly half the nation’s undergraduate population, the oldest and most elite universities reflect — and magnify — a lackluster record in elevating women to the most powerful reaches of society.
For nearly two decades, enrollment of women at the University of Tokyo has hovered around 20 percent, an imparity that extends across many top Japanese colleges.
They lag other selective institutions across Asia. Women are close to half of the student body at Peking University in China, 40 percent of Seoul National in South Korea and 51 percent of the National University of Singapore.
At Todai, “you can see right away there is something completely out of balance,” Ms. Hayashi said. “Because women are half of society, there is something strange about a university that is only 20 percent women.”
Chizuko Ueno, a retired professor of gender studies, suggested the imbalance was a symptom of inequality that goes beyond higher education.
“Even before students enter the university, there is already hidden sexism,” Ms. Ueno said. “Unfortunately,” she added, “the University of Tokyo is an example of this.”
Her sentiments touched a nerve. On Twitter, male students complained of being harangued. “Why is she not celebrating us, the male students?” one wrote. Another called it “feminist propaganda.”
“We are just like stores that don’t have enough customers,” said Akiko Kumada, one of the few female engineering professors at Todai. “Right now,” she said, “we are not getting enough female customers.”
Ms. Kumada has a few theories. Young girls, she said, are repeatedly fed the idea that academic achievement is not feminine. Some women, she said, might fear that a Todai degree leads to a high-powered career in a brutal working culture. One graduate committed suicide after telling friends she had endured grueling hours at an advertising agency.
Todai draws from the same high schools year after year. More than a quarter of students who enrolled in 2019 came from just 10 high schools, seven of which are all male.
“With sons, parents really expect a lot and want their boys to perform to the maximum level and aim as high as they can go,” said Hiroshi Ono, principal of Tokyo Gakugei University High School, which sent 45 students to Todai this year, 11 of them women.
Parents, Mr. Ono said, “feel bad about pushing girls to work that hard — they think it would be better for them to get married and be a housewife.”
Women at Todai often feel isolated. When a class gathered for a graduation photo, Kiri Sugimoto, 24, a law student, was the only woman.
“What irritated me was that the men made remarks like having me in the picture would look great because it wouldn’t look like a boys prep school photo,” she said. “I was treated as the decorative rose among stones.”