A group of multiparty lawmakers will submit to the Diet this year a bill aimed at dealing with Japan’s low representation of women in politics, which puts the country near the bottom of global rankings on the issue, political sources said Wednesday. However, the bill will only ask political
A group of multiparty lawmakers will submit to the Diet this year a bill aimed at dealing with Japan’s low representation of women in politics, which puts the country near the bottom of global rankings on the issue, political sources said Wednesday.
However, the bill will only ask political parties to «make efforts» to field men and women in equal numbers as candidates in national and local elections, and will not penalize its violators.
Among politicians who have been working on the bill are Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Seiko Noda of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who also serves as minister for gender equality, and Masaharu Nakagawa, a lower house member of the opposition Democratic Party.
The ruling and opposition parties submitted similar bills to the ordinary session of the Diet last year and were set to unify the bills, but the two sides gave up the plan after allegations of cronyism against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took center stage in parliament. The bills were scrapped after the lower house’s dissolution.
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a global organization of national parliaments based in Geneva, women accounted for only 9.
