Is it time for Japan to relook its positioning on gender diversity?
In January 2017, The Japan Times published an article which stated women accounted for only 3.4 percent of executives at Japanese listed firms in 2016. This survey, done by the Cabinet Office, showed this was much lower than the target of 30 percent set by the target.
Japan is in need of a long overdue overhaul in improving gender diversity, especially in the workplace. Due to long standing traditions and culture, men are still regarded as key decision makers. CEOs are usually male, with women seen as having a supporting role, whether in an organization or the household. Women who speak up are seen as not knowing their place and behaving inappropriately. In a Japanese workplace, this leads to penalization and ostracization.
Not only that, when dealing with external parties, women can find themselves rejected at meetings and told to come back with more senior, male colleagues in order for a meeting to proceed.
Gender diversity is only possible with the support of both male and female. Unfortunately, most males are not even aware of the issue, as evidenced in the Women Matter survey done by McKinsey & Co, a global management consulting firm. In the study, only 19% of men strongly agreed that reaching top management positions were harder for women. Men were also more likely to reject the idea that the climb to the top was steeper for women.
While women are no less ambitious and competent than their male counterparts, the journey to the top is often much more challenging for women, due to both conscious and unconscious biases. However, the McKinsey study showed that companies that had more women in top management positions exhibited better organizational and financial performance, with three key dimensions being strengthened: people development, expectation and rewards, and with being a role model. Japan, unsurprisingly, scored the lowest in the study, far behind its Western counterparts.
What many fail to see is that with gender diversity in the workplace, a workplace is strengthened instead of weakened. Creating a gender diverse workplace attracts a wider pool of talents, which translates into is a more conducive environment for innovation, ideation and problem solving. With gender diversity, problems would be viewed from multiple perspectives, leading then to a solution that is richer and far more dimensional vs having a single viewpoint.
Japan’s aging and decreasing population has led to a shortage of talent in the market. Given the many benefits of gender diversity coupled with their population woes, it’s time Japan takes a step forward in embracing a fair representation between genders.