Sexism is set to sink a woman’s bid to become Japan’s first female prime minister

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Ms. Takaichi has the support of Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister, and has been busy during the campaign focusing on the conservative credentials she saw as Japan’s Iron Lady. These policies include plans to ramp up defense spending and fend off China’s efforts to seize Japanese territory, although others have suggested that Abe’s support is primarily an attempt to modernize the party’s sexual image.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in a country where the World Economic Forum ranked 147th for women’s political empowerment, nine places behind Saudi Arabia, the ruling party does not seem quite ready for a woman to lead it yet.

“Politics remains a very difficult task for women in Japan,” said Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at Temple University in Tokyo.

“There are so few women at all levels of politics in Japan that they can’t even support each other in such a situation, so it’s all up to them to rely on men to come forward and get anything done,” she said.

“Politics in Japan can get bad, and a lot of women are afraid to get into this kind of environment, especially if they think it will have an impact on their personal lives.

“In rural Japan, local government is still seen as the man’s job and any woman trying to get involved will be the target of comments about who takes care of her husband and children,” Murakami said. “Things are better in the cities, of course, but there is still a broad attitude that is led by men and followed by women.”

Opinion polls on the upcoming leadership vote support this proposal, with Ms. Noda garnering the support of 3.4 percent of party members, while Ms. Takeshi backed 16.2 percent of the party. Nearly 11 percent of those with the vote say they have not made a decision yet, but 47.4 percent support Taro Kono, the centrist minister responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Japanese vaccination programme, and 22.4 percent support Fumio Kishida, the former foreign minister.

“It will be very difficult for any of the candidates to win,” said Tsumi Yamaguchi, of the Tokyo-based Women in a New World network.

“The reason is the same as it has always been,” she said. Japanese society is largely dominated by men, men occupy all the important positions in politics and business, and it has proven very difficult to change our social system.

“I’m afraid it will take many years to change enough people’s opinions for Japan to be a leader.”

However, there is at least a growing acknowledgment of the problem, with a study published in June by the Nippon Foundation determining that more than 62 percent of women said their gender was underrepresented in politics at both the local and national levels, with that figure. It rises to nearly 70 percent of educated women to the university level.

Women represent just 10 percent of politicians in Japan’s lower house and 20 percent of the upper house, while the figure in local councils across the country hovers around 10 percent.

According to the United Nations, the global rate of women in national parliaments is 24.3 percent, while 19.8 percent of politicians in Asia are female, and this percentage rises to 28.6 percent in Europe.

The flaws that women face in Japan’s political life are largely reflected in society, with the country ranked 120th out of 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Index.

Japan ranked lower than Angola, Ghana and Ghana and only slightly behind Sierra Leone, while the Asahi newspaper announced the results of the study with the headline declaring that “Japan still ranks last among the G7 countries in gender equality.”

Critics point out that the overall score could have been much worse, but it was reinforced by the relatively high numbers of health and educational attainment.

Evidence for the state of gender equality is evident throughout society. Women have borne the brunt of job losses due to the coronavirus pandemic because they make up a disproportionately large proportion of Japan’s part-time employees, mainly because women are still expected to take care of the home and raise children.

The overall power of men was again emphasized this summer in the debate over whether the law should allow women to keep their maiden name after marriage. In hearings of a committee set up to look into the matter, mostly male members of the Liberal Democratic Party said the proposal was not acceptable because it could cause “confusion”.

However, the possibility of Japan having its first female prime minister by the end of the week is not entirely ruled out, Prof Murakami suggests, although that would primarily be the result of political expediency.

Factions within the LDP are vying for power and the right wing of the party is hostile to the current favorite, Mr. Kono, who is seen as a middle of the road. If no outright winner emerges from the initial vote, a second vote is taken for the highest-ranking candidates.

Crucially, only politicians have the right to vote in that second round, and nationalists in Parliament can be well persuaded to rally behind the most conservative candidate, Ms. Takeshi.

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