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Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office6-1, Nagata-cho 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-8914 Japan
Participation by Women in Public Activities
More Women in Administrative and International Organizations
The number of women holding high-ranking positions in local public bodies is rising. As of November 1999, Japan had six female municipal mayors (out of around 3,200 cities, towns and villages) and female vice-governors in nine prefectures.
In the national government, in FY1997, 10 women were assigned to positions as Directors-General of a Bureau or Department, and 94 to the Division-Director or Division-Deputy Director level.
There have been eight female Ambassadors and one female Consul-General from Japan. Two of the Ambassadors, namely the Ambassador to Ireland and the Ambassador to Uzbekstan, and the Consul-General in Brisbane, Australia still hold their positions.
In the United Nations, six Japanese women hold high-ranking posts: Ms. Sadako Ogata, the first Japanese to be named United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Assistant Administrator and Director of UNDP, Director of Human Development Report Office of UNDP, Assistant Director-General of ILO, Director of the Bureau of Personnel of UNESCO,and Deputy Executive Secretary of ESCAP.
Women in Politics
Female Members of the Diet
Since women acquired suffrage in 1945, there have been 20 elections for the House of Representatives and 18 for the House of Councillors. The turnout of women voters has exceeded that of men in almost every election since 1968. The Diet had 68 female members as of July 1999 (9.0% of the total), 25 in the House of Representatives (5.0%) and 43 in the House of Councillors (17.1%). (The transition in the number and ratio of female Diet Members in the past 50 years is shown in the table on page 15.)
Female Members of Local Assemblies
The proportion of female members among the total membership of all local assemblies in all prefectures, cities, towns, villages and special wards rose from 1.0% in 1976 to 4.9% in 1998.
Female Members of National Advisory Councils and Committees
National advisory councils and committees with at least one female member accounted for only 30.8% of all such bodies in 1975. This figure reached 55.3% in 1985, the final year of the United Nations Decade for Women, and reached 94.4% as of 30 September 1999 (187 of 198). The overall proportion of female members on advisory councils and committees has increased more than eight times, from 2.4% in 1975 to 19.8% (842 of 4,246 members) as of 30 September 1999.(Table is given on page 7)
Prefectural advisory councils and committees instituted by law had 4,427 female members in FY1998, representing 14.4% of all members (30,735). Advisory councils in 12 ordinance-designated cities had 777 female members, or 13.0% of the total membership (5,987) in FY1998.
Judiciary
The total number of female judges was 308 in April 1999 (10.4% of the total). There were also 122 female prosecutors (5.5%) as of 1 April 1999 and 1,532 female practising lawyers (8.9%) in April 1999. In FY1999, 287 women passed the bar examination (28.7%).
