Kirk here with news about International Women’s Day, which was yesterday, in Kumamoto. I came across this article about research by Mari Miura of Sophia University. Prof. Miura has ranked all prefectures in Japan by gender equity in various domains. All in all, the situation in Kumamoto is not very good.
Here are Kumamoto’s rankings in the four major domains of the survey (see circular graph):
- Politics: 38th of 47
- Administration: 40th of 47
- Education: 18th of 47
- Economics: 10th of 47
One thing I don’t like about how this index has been published is that the details are behind a paywall. For your reference, the site with the basic data (only in Japanese at this point) can be found here:
https://digital.kyodonews.jp/gender2023/
I had a lot of trouble finding a page that was not behind a paywall that would tell me what indices made up each domain but I finally found this for 2022:
https://digital.kyodonews.jp/gender2022/paid_ranking
I learned from this page that the “administration” domain, in which Kumamoto is near the bottom, is made up of 10 indices of male-female ratios in various regional committees and management positions in the regional government.
At any rate, the area in which Kumamoto is worst is the make up of the prefectural assembly. Female representation is lower there than any other analogous governing body in Japan. Wikipedia says that only 2 of the 47 members are women.
https://nordot.app/1005991502485028864
Since Japan’s ranking in international gender equality indices is abysmal, being toward the bottom in Japan is pretty darn bad, I’m afraid. :( But, I hope that Prof. Miura’s work will lead to continued improvement.
