Japan : too few women in politics

Japan should promote women in politics and business, a government paper said Tuesday, pointing out that they make up just 11 percent of lower house members and one percent of corporate leaders. The white paper on gender equality suggested Japan introduce a quota system to boost the participation of women in politics, as it currently ranks 121st out of 186 nations in terms of the female presence in parliament. In the powerful lower house of parliament, only 11.3 percent of lawmakers are women, up from 9.0 percent in 2005, said the report adopted by the cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan. The figure in the upper house is 14 percent. "Japan is behind the international standard in terms of female presence in the political sector," the paper said, suggesting that the country introduce quotas like Sweden, Germany and South Korea have done in the past. Japan's government has set an official goal of increasing the female presence in all key sectors of society to about 30 percent by 2020. In the business sector, women now account for only 1.2 percent, or 515 out of 42,000 executives in about 3,600 listed companies, it said. Worldwide, Rwanda has the highest ratio of female lawmakers, at 56.3 percent, the paper said. Next come Sweden with 45 percent and South Africa with 44.5 percent. In Asia, Nepal has the highest figure, 33.2 percent, followed by South Korea, where 14.7 percent of lawmakers are women.