Japan’s new Cabinet looks a lot like the old one
TOKYO — While parts of the developed world grapple with issues of systemic discrimination and gender imbalances in the workplace, Japan’s government is, by and large, keeping calm and carrying on.
Yoshihide Suga was formally voted in by parliament and sworn in as Japan’s new prime minister on Wednesday to replace Shinzo Abe, who announced his resignation last month for health reasons.
When he unveiled his first Cabinet Wednesday, it contained just two women in the 20-strong lineup, one fewer than his predecessor’s last leadership team.
The 71-year-old Suga had been Abe’s right-hand man during his long administration and had campaigned on a promise of continuity. Powerful faction leaders within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who had backed Suga for the top job also needed to be appeased.
So it was perhaps no great surprise to see so many familiar faces in Suga’s first team.
Taro Aso, the 79-year-old head of a powerful faction, kept his job as deputy prime minister and finance minister, despite a long history of sexist, nationalist and generally insensitive remarks.
Last year, Aso blamed Japan’s graying population on “those who decide not to give birth to children.”
In 2018, he appeared to turn the blame around on a female journalist who had accused a senior bureaucrat of sexual harassment, suggesting she “could have left the scene” if she really hated his attention, and recommending the media “only assign male reporters to the Finance Ministry.”
On social media, wags swiftly dubbed it the or grandpa Cabinet.
Abe had come into office vowing to make women “shine.” He enacted a law to promote women’s participation and advancement in the workplace, and expanded parental leave and child care services, helping female workforce participation to rise from 63 percent to 71 percent, a higher level than in the United States.
But many of the new jobs for women were lower pay, contract or part-time positions, and women have suffered disproportionately from layoffs during the coronavirus epidemic. Abe’s vow, for women to fill 30 percent of leadership positions across the country by 2020, hasn’t been met.
For all its perceived modernity in the West, Japan ranks 121st in the World Economic Forum’s gender gap index — and even lower, 144th place — in the political empowerment subindex, sandwiched between Qatar and Iran.
Just 10 percent of the members of parliament’s lower house are women, with the ratio even lower among LDP members.