Japan: 314 women running for 465-seat lower house in general election, a record

A record number of women are running in Japan’s general election this month, although they still account for less than a quarter of candidates, local media said Wednesday.

New Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is seeking to shore up his mandate in the October 27 vote by retaining a majority for the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Japan has never had a woman prime minister and Ishiba narrowly beat one of its few prominent female politicians, nationalist Sanae Takaichi, to the top job in a party leadership vote.

The 1,344 lower house candidates who kicked off their campaigns on Tuesday for all 465 seats include a record 314 women, Japanese media including the Yomiuri and Asahi dailies said.

The ratio of women candidates – around 23 percent – is also a record high, according to the Yomiuri.

Ishiba’s efforts to encourage women to run – instead of ex-lawmakers embroiled in a slush fund scandal in certain cases – is one reason behind the increase, the reports said.

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The previous record was 229 in the 2009 general election.

Female leaders are still rare in business and politics in Japan, which is ranked 118 out of 146 in the 2024 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report.

Ishiba’s 20-strong cabinet includes just two women.

But the government has set a goal for 35 percent of the candidates for parliament’s powerful lower house to be women by 2025, up from 18 percent in 2017.

In Japan, “political parties are male-oriented and not open-minded, so it’s difficult to find female candidates,” Momoko Nojo, head of the organisation No Youth No Japan, told AFP ahead of September’s LDP leadership vote.

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“Many women also take on care work at home, which makes it difficult for them to be a politician and take care of their family,” added Nojo, who also runs a project to encourage and support women and minorities to become politicians.

A United Nations committee for gender equality is currently reviewing women’s rights in Japan.

It is expected to make recommendations to the Japanese government – for the first time in eight years – after a meeting in Geneva on Thursday.