Japan Sends Male Minister to Lead G7 Meeting on Women’s Empowerment
Japan Sends Male Minister to Lead G7 Meeting on Women’s Empowerment
The incident highlights ongoing struggles with gender parity in Japan—which ranks lowest among G7 member states on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index.
Representatives from each of the Group of Seven (G7) nations gathered in the Japanese city of Nikko, 70 miles north of Tokyo, this weekend for a two-day summit on gender equality and women’s empowerment, where they discussed everything from sexual violence to LGBT rights to economic imbalances—vowing to reduce the wage gap and boost women’s representation in executive and managerial positions.
But the summit also made for an awkward photo-op, highlighting Japan’s ongoing struggles with gender: with the country hosting the G7 this year, Japan’s representative to the gender equality meeting, Masanobu Ogura, served as its chair—he also was its only man.
My god that’s just….wow. How offensive and senselessly stupid.