A "big gap" exists between female representation at Japan's central bank and its overseas counterparts, the bank's new governor Kazuo Ueda acknowledged Thursday.
Ueda took office last month, with some analysts arguing it was time for Japan to join Europe and the United States by naming a woman governor to succeed long-time chief Haruhiko Kuroda.
The 71-year-old economics professor secured the top job instead, along with two male deputy governors.
Ueda, speaking to AFP in an interview with several other media outlets, conceded the bank was behind some counterparts on gender representation.
At international meetings such as the G7, G20 and IMF "there has been a high percentage of women at the table with me", he said.
"There are women like (BOJ) executive director (Tokiko) Shimizu, but the number is still very low compared with foreign countries. There is a big gap."
The problem, however, extended far beyond the central bank.
"This is a reflection of Japanese society as a whole, not just the Bank of Japan. It cannot be changed by the Bank of Japan by itself overnight," Ueda said.
The bank was working to address the issue, including through recruiting, he said.
Its fiscal 2022 annual review said women were being targeted as recruits and made up more than 30 percent of new hires who will be candidates for senior jobs in the future.
Japan has a highly educated female labour force but women occupy few top jobs in business and politics.
The U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have both had female chiefs, although they remain relative outliers globally.
Ueda took office after a decade of ultra-loose monetary policy championed by Kuroda and is being closely watched for any sign he might move to finally raise rates in line with other central banks.
Kuroda argued Japan has yet to achieve its long-sought goal of sustained two percent inflation, seen as key to turbocharging the world's third-largest economy.
Inflation has hit double that figure this year but the bank argues that is the result of temporary factors such as the war in Ukraine, and the figure is likely to drop back below two percent in coming months.
Ueda has squelched any talk of sudden policy shifts, although he said there are signs of a shift in longstanding wage stagnation and past reluctance by companies to pass higher costs on to customers.
"Until recently, the feeling was that if others were not raising their prices and wages, you would not raise them either," he said.
"Now it has changed to I can raise mine and others are also doing the same. In the case of wages, we now see people having to increase because other companies are raising their wages."
He said there was still room for caution and the bank was waiting to see if the shifts will "continue in the future, and will they will spread and be sustained".
The bank announced last month a "broad-perspective" review of its easing, with a timeframe of 12-18 months.
There has been criticism of the market distortions created by the BOJ's policy, and also a perception that it has worked hand-in-glove with a government that has an interest in keeping rates low given its astronomical debt-to-GDP ratio.
But Ueda insisted the bank's policies were not driven by the government's spending plans or its finances.
© 2023 AFP
18 Comments
Login to comment
dagon
Yeah, the problem is there is not enough estrogen at the BOJ Ueda, not the QE easy money for the capital rich .
https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/sep/28/quantitative-easing-qe-pernicious-effects-favour-wealthy-tax-middle-class
That is why he gets paid the big yen.
sir_bentley28
This! Well said! These things are changing! And being that it is in Japan, they are changing slower than tar in winter. But they cannot be changed within a few days. It takes time!
fxgai
analysts of what type?
What matters is whether the BoJ and government are pushing good policies or not, not the gender of the governor.
The entire BoJ could be all women and it would be little different if the women were also enacting the same old bad policy.
It would be a plus to have diversity on these bodies, but the bigger, more pressing issue is that the policies suck. I don’t hear a bunch of women calling for policy change so ….
JeffLee
He's absolutely right.
The sentence should add, "because a significant portion choose to leave full time managerial positions to raise their families, shrinking the pool of qualified female candidates."
FrenchFox
Really? Is Jerome H. Powell a woman? He looks like a man to me. Maybe he is trans?
FrenchFox
And good for them. In the west, children are raised by the internet. In Japan, they are raised by their mothers and fathers. And it shows.
Roy Sophveason
It's a bit complicated, so bear with me: The phrase "have had" differs from "have" in what linguists call a tense. In this case the present perfect tense indicates that something happened in the past. Such as, for example, Janet Yellen having been the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018.
Paustovsky
Lol. It only shows you've never lived in Japan.
asdfghjkl
We don’t need representation, we need people who are qualified for the job and do it fairly. I don’t want to be represented if that person is useless.
opheliajadefeldt
We all know things will not change, the OLD men love their power, corruption, and money too much. It is the same in most countries.
gogogo
You don't say, look at the photo, pointing out the fact but offers no suggestion on how to fix it.
Kingston Obike
In the University, I realized that even though the male : female student ratio is oftentimes in favor of women, you would barely see that many female students in STEM related disciplines, and are usually more represented in the social sciences, so definitely its worrying why there aren't many in executive positions in Japanese banks because I'm positive that there are many female bankers good at what they do. One possible suggestion might be the fact that women believe men do not consider them for marriage after a certain age, so they try their hardest to marry early, and in some cases choose to have kids as early as possible so they'd be able to focus on other things later in their career; but it turns out that finding a person to wed these days is more difficult than ever before, despite the popularity of dating apps; and for those that succeed in taking that step, you'd find that they did not get married for the right reasons and it ends up being tenuous. For those with no intentions to get married at first, you find that when they eventually balk due to peer pressure or loneliness and try to get married, mental health problems set in, this may lead to resignations before they even get to the peak of their career. With men, due to the expectations that society already places on them, they don't bother much with the same problems that their female counterparts are forced to endure and slave away at their monotonous jobs for the vast majority of their lives knowing that it is "normal" and expecting anything else would be looked down upon.
Unfortunately, I did not back some of what I stated with statistical data, it is just based on a great many articles I've read at various times on this issue and what I've encountered with colleagues in Kyoto and Okinawa. However, societal problems are definitely the most significant impediment to this problem which may take at least a decade to resolve at this rate.
Rakuraku
FrenchFoxToday 09:08 am JST
Yellen Fed chair before Powell is woman as long as I know
kurisupisu
Rip roaring inflation and a skewed financial system that benefits the rich and large companies and they are worrying about
‘female representation’ ?
What a joke!
ThonTaddeo
"We can't get women, who are typically the ones who manage household finances, to work for us, where we push out nonstop propaganda about how inflation and currency devaluation are somehow good for working people and households! Why can't women see that we elites are correct and the people are wrong!?"
Wandora
I saw five people building a house today, and there wasn't one female. None wanted to do that job. Which is fine. But there's no rule stopping them if they wanted to. I guess some virtue signaller could pronounce regret at the situation, but I'd have to ask what he regrets about it.
Speed
Just walk into any bank here in Japan and see how many of the top managerial desks in the back half of the bank are occupied by men, while the teller windows and the seats right behind them are occupied by women.
As long as these high-career and low-career tracks continue to exist at banks, it'll never be gender diversified at the top.
Mr Kipling
Women generally have more sense than to work the 12-14 hour days these bank executives put in.