The government's Council for Gender Equality is scheduled to submit by the end of this month a proposal for the third basic plan to build a gender-equal society. Two such plans have been written on the basis of the Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society, which went into effect in 1999. The draft for the coming plan underlines the fact that the attempt at building a gender-equal society has not made sufficient progress in the past decade.
The reason is clear: During the days of Liberal Democratic Party rule, there were few political leaders enthusiastic about the issue. The Kan administration should exhibit strong leadership to help realize the idea contained in the law.
The draft describes steps toward raising women's participation in important fields to at least 30 percent by 2020 and calls for introducing a system in which husbands and wives may use separate surnames in their family registers. Statistics show the few fields in which women account for at least 30 percent of the participants — government councils (33 percent), fast-track national servants (30 percent), the Japanese workforce in international organizations (56 percent) and pharmacists (67 percent).