Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may have set the empowerment of women as a major pillar to spur economic growth, but Japan's already poor gender gap has gotten even worse, according to a report by the World Economic Forum released Friday.
This year's Global Gender Gap Report ranks Japan at 105th among 136 countries, its worst showing since the WEF started the survey in 2006. Japan ranked 101st last year.
The drop was mainly due to a decrease in the number of female lawmakers, the report says. Of the 722 lawmakers in both chambers of the Diet, only 77 are women.
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