In November 2017,
one woman and her baby
brought a Japanese city council
to a standstill.
Well, I heard shouts.
Really loud shouts.
One of them was shouting:
They said:
And I said:
Yuka Ogata is an assemblywoman
for Kumamoto city.
In other words,
she’s one of the few Japanese women
in a position of leadership.
Yuka made headlines
on her first day back at work
since giving birth.
She was kicked out
of an assembly meeting
for showing up with
her newborn baby in her arms.
I told them:
“Well, I am representing people like me,
so I have all the right to be here.”
They told me: “No, no, no,
they cannot open the session
as long as there's a baby
in the chamber.”
Over 60% of women
in Japan quit their jobs
after giving birth
to their first child.
And employers expect that,
which is why they’re
less likely to invest
in the career development
of their women employees.
What’s worse?
It’s not uncommon
for employers to demote
or pressure women into quitting
as soon as they become pregnant.
This is known as matahara,
or maternity harassment.
Yuka has long fought for
women’s rights in the workplace.
But most of her proposals, such as
having a nursery room
built in her workplace,
have been vetoed by her city council.
And so she took her baby to work
to confront her colleagues with
the reality of motherhood.
I want the people in politics,
people in power,
to listen to what we are saying.
What women have been saying.
We are really struggling,
and we want to have children,
but we can’t.
Yuka’s story highlights a larger
problem in Japanese society:
the failure of Womenomics.
In a nutshell,
Womenomics is
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan
to save the economy
by bringing more women
into Japan’s male-dominated workforce.
You see, more than a quarter
of Japan’s population
is over the age of 65.
Its population is aging dramatically,
to the point where adult diapers
are outselling baby diapers.
And not enough babies
are being born
to replace that aging population.
That leads to an acute
shortage of labor,
and ultimately,
to economic stagnation.
In an attempt to tackle this,
the prime minister decided
women could fill the labor gap.
And he packaged that
as an advance for women’s rights.
He said he wanted to create a society
in which “all women shine.”
More women in senior positions,
improved maternity leave, etc.
But Womenomics
has been failing women big time.
Instead of uplifting them,
it’s exploiting them.
Here’s why:
See, the number of women workers
has actually increased
since Womenomics.
But in 2018, Japan ranked
110th out of 149 countries
in the global gender gap index.
And that’s partly because of the quality
of the jobs that women are getting:
They’re mostly getting
part-time jobs
without the benefits
that come with full-time work.
There is more and more
part-time jobs for women.
Part-time jobs with
very low wages and no welfare.
So now there are many
women who have jobs,
but still struggle to make ends meet.
There’s another reason why Japan ranks
this low in the gender gap index.
This is Prime Minister Abe’s cabinet,
the people making the nation’s
most important political decisions.
Now count the number of women.
Exactly.
The reason why the situation
is the way it is now is because
there’s very few women
in decision-making positions.
That’s right:
Only 12.4% of lawmakers, senior officials
and managers in Japan are women.
And it wasn’t until 2015
that large companies
were finally required by law
to set targets for increasing
women in management
and to disclose
those results to the public.
But surprise surprise,
there are no penalties
if they fail to comply.
Is [Womenomics] working from
Shinzo Abe’s point of view?
Maybe to some extent,
because his objective
is to raise production.
But to me, the government’s
plan to make women shine ...
I guess it’s safe to say,
it’s a bit different from what we want.
Womenomics was
the greatest sign of hope
women had seen in years.
It meant something profound
and unprecedented.
Their well-being was
no longer a burden,
but at last, a national priority.
Six years on,
there are more women in the workforce,
but they’re still losing out.
How Womenomics is enforced,
or how it affects women
doesn’t seem to matter
to those who came up with it.
In Japan,
we have a term ... kodakara,
which means children are treasures.
These days we don’t hear
that word anymore.
When this is what it’s like to be
a working woman in Japan,
is it any wonder
why they’re still struggling to shine?