In Japan, the philosophy of gender equality, which is a conventional norm among the international community, is not shared by everyone. We are still in the middle of the journey.

Marukawa is the former TV news announcer with the looks and "right" attitude who knows how to play them quietly like a fiddle and climb the greasy pole to the glass ceiling and beyond. She's the one to watch!

Despite being minister in charge of women’s empowerment and gender equality, Marukawa is a member of a group that opposes married couples having different surnames. Her husband is "historical revisionist" Taku Otsuka, Nippon Kaigi stalwart. Nippon Kaigi believes that women are subservient to men. She's taken his surname, but uses her maiden name in her professional career. LDP superstar, barking mad hypocrite.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56214817

Hope she put a 'muzukashii' and a 'shoganai' in there somewhere for good (cop-out) effect. We are still in the middle of the middle ages and most people don't have the stones to speak up is what she should have said.

@ Alfie NoakesToday 08:33 am JST

Exactly, her husband's name came to my mind once I saw her name.

Anything or anyone related to 日本会議 makes me want to wash myself in a tub full of bleach.

More likely, it is only the beginning of the journey.

A long way to go..

Isn't this the same lawmaker who used to use nihonjin de umarete yokatta ("happy I was born Japanese") as a campaign slogan years ago? Seems like she mouths the right words on gender equality while subscribing to a different kind of bigotry.

Sexism is still sexism, regardless of the lipstick you put on it. If this dolt wants to claim sexism is uniquely Japanese and then brag about Japaneseness, she's not exactly doing the nation any favors. She should put on a badge that says "Near dead last in gender equality!" and wear it with pride.

This sounds like Maruyama just spitting the dummy in a call for Japanese exceptionalism. "We are Japan and that equality stuff is not for us."

As it happens, if she could be bothered to do her job, I'm sure a strong critique of the way gender equality is calculated by the UN could be written. Lots of people seem fascinated by the "Japan is 121st in the world" number, but I strongly suspect some of its methods are suspect, if not completely bogus. Japan ranks 40th in gender equality for health, in spite of having the longest female life expectancy and pretty much the longest female active life expectancy. If "active life" does not equal health, what does? One reason Japan ranks 40th is due to limited access to the contraceptive pill. Access to contraception and unwanted pregnancies are not major issues for Japanese women. Similarly it is questionable or perhaps even silly to expect Japan to have high rates of screening for breast cancer when the incidence of breast cancer in Japan is far lower than in the West. Fwiw, Japan also ranks 91st in gender equality in education. A huge proportion of Japanese women have a college education. Do as many women go to college in the 90 countries ranked ahead of Japan? A few women being actively denied medical school doesn't knock you down that far.

Before anyone says it, none of the above is to suggest Japan is a nirvana for women or to deny that Japan does and should score very badly on the other two categories for ranking gender equality, economics and politics. It should be remembered though that most people, both men and women, will never be company directors. Gender inequality at much lower levels, such as unequal pay for the same work, affects far far more people than the much heralded "% of female directors" at the very top.

@smithinjapan and @kohakuebisu

Yes, that survey, which the media loves to bash Japan with, is biased and deeply flawed.

I read it in depth a few years ago. It measures only women's progress compared to men, with no penalty when women are ahead of men (such as in longevity, not being homeless, not committing suicide, or the like). So you get third-world dictatorships who treat their men really badly and score high for it.

A country that banned boys from any kind of schooling would get the same perfect score that a country that offered equal education to both! A country where women outlived men by 20 years would get a higher score than one in which its men outlived its women by a single day.

It's a terrible survey and should either be replaced by a better one, or should at the very least be renamed the Women's Empowerment Index or something like that.

We are still in the middle of the journey.

A journey back to the 1930s, with the likes of her and her geriatric male LDP cronies in charge.

Applying* ‘lipstick” *to something could also be perceived as ‘*sexist’ @smithinjapan 1:14p JST - “Sexism is still sexism, regardless of the lipstick you put on it***.**”

In the middle of the journey? What journey? Just stop it!

Not so much middle of the journey as Middle Ages!

We are still in the middle of the journey.

Not even at the beginning.

We are still in the middle of the journey.

Not even at the beginning.

They cancelled the trip and stayed home.