TOKYO REPORT: Political Parties to Be Tested on Gender Equality

August 28, 2018

Tokyo- Political parties in Japan are being tested over whether they are earnestly committed to gender equality in the male-dominated world of the nation's politics, under a law passed in the ordinary session of parliament that ended in late July.

The passage of the legislation is an "important step" forward for encouraging women's participation in politics, said Fumio Kishida, chairman of the Policy Research Council of the governing Liberal Democratic Party.

The new law calls for political parties and groups to strive for equalizing "as much as possible" the number of male and female candidates in national and local elections.

The law has no binding force, including penalties, stipulating that political parties and groups should make "voluntary efforts" such as setting goals in order meet its purpose. In other words, it tests each party's seriousness about gender equality in politics. Next year's unified local elections and the triennial election for the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, will serve as the first measurement of commitment.

In 2010, the Japanese government adopted a plan to raise the proportion of women in all candidates in elections for both houses of parliament to 30 pct by 2020. In the 2017 election for the House of Representatives, however, female candidates' share was 17.7 pct, bringing the post-election proportion of women in the Lower House to 10.1 pct.

In the Upper House, where half of members are up for reelection every three years, the share of female candidates stood at 24.2 pct in 2013 and 24.7 pct in 2016. At present, only 20.7 pct of Upper House lawmakers are women.

According to data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a global inter-parliamentary organization based in Geneva, as of June 1, Japan ranked 158th of 193 countries in terms of the percentage of women in the lower chamber.

Political parties in Germany introduced an electoral gender quota system in the second half of the 1980s and have since raised the country's ranking to 46th place, with female members of its lower chamber accounting for 30.7 pct. France, which has pushed ahead with legal measures for gender equality since it amended its constitution in 1999, currently ranks 16th at 39 pct.

The opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Democratic Party for the People have called for the introduction of electoral gender quotas as their basic policy.

"We welcome with open arms women eager to change politics," said Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the CDPJ. "We want such women to continue knocking on the door."

The DPFP plans to provide up to 500,000 yen each to first-time female candidates who run for next spring's unified local elections on the party's ticket, in addition to regular endorsement funds.

In fact, political parties have increased the number of female candidates in recent by-elections for both chambers of parliament and gubernatorial elections.

But a lack of family understanding continues to dissuade some women from entering politics.

"To field a man as our candidate, we have hard time winning support from his wife," a senior member of an opposition party said. "But in the reverse case, the hurdle becomes much higher, because it involves the problems of both husband and child care."

The LDP has another kind of headache, as it already has many male lawmakers in both constituencies and proportional representation districts in national elections, leaving little room for female candidates.

"We cannot force incumbents to resign," an LDP leader said. "We want to increase the number of women, but it's not an easy goal."

If political parties sit back and cannot show clear results in line with the purpose of gender equality law, a law to introduce a binding quota system may enter the debate, analysts said. Jiji Press