{Inter} Cultural Japan

The Swiss-based World Economic Forum has just released a global report measuring women’s achievements in four key areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. The report was authored by Saadia Zahidi, Economist and Head, Women Leaders Programme. The survey covers 115 countries and 90% of the world’s population.

Where do you think Japan comes in? Indeed, at a disappointing 79th position. This is due to low scores in both “economic opportunity” and “political empowerment.”

As regards the economic position of women in Japan, labor participation is low at 48%, income is less then half that of men, and there are only 10% women in managerial positions.

Political empowerment is possibly even worse, with only 9% women in parliament, 13% in ministerial positions and never a female prime minister or head of state. On both these items Japan scores only 83rd position worldwide.

Japan also does not so well in education of females (what surprised me): although there is 99% literacy and 100% of females are enrolled in both primary and secondary education (the same as for males), it is tertiary education where things get skewed with only 51% of young women entering university against 57% of males.

Happily, it is in the third item, health, that Japan shines, with an almost even sex-ratio at birth and a life expectancy of females of 77.7 years (against 72.3 for males). Japan comes in at first position here, a mitigating factor which lifts the overall ranking up to 79.

As regards Japan’s neigbors, China comes in at a not-too-bad 63, but South Korea does even worse than Japan, scoring only 92. The U.S. scores a 22nd position.

Who are the winners? As was to be expected, the Scandinavian countries: Sweden is 1, Norway 2, Finland 3 and Iceland 4. Germany comes in at 5th position and the Philippines at 6 - the only Asian country in the top ten. New Zealand is 7, Denmark 8, the UK 9 and Ireland 10.

My country of origin, the Netherlands, comes in at a to me disappointing 12th position - apparently due to education (too many girls seem to drop out in primary and secundary education, although on the other hand there are more women at university than men), health (life expectance only 72.6) and to a lesser degree still a gap in economic participation.

You can download the full report from the WEF website - it is an interesting read!