Event


Why womenomics?


In Japan, women face significant challenges in combining a career with living up to social and family expectations. To illustrate, Japan is ranked 104th in the World Economic Forum’s 2014 Global Gender Gap Index, which measures the relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy and politics.

The government of Shinzo Abe has set ambitious targets for the year 2020, such as increasing female representation in leadership positions to 30%, increasing overall labor participation in the 25-44 age bracket to 73% and boosting the number of fathers taking paternity leave. This policy, commonly referred to as “womenomics”, has received much attention both domestically and internationally, and hopes are high that it will bring about real change.

As the term womenomics implies, Abe’s government sees gender equality in Japan mainly as an economic issue. This is not surprising given the fact that the Japanese population is forecast to shrink by 40 million in the next 45 years—getting more women to join the labor population is simply an economic imperative.

For this HagueTalks, the aim is to dig deeper. Rather than focusing on what womenomics means for the Japanese economy, this event explores what it means for individuals’ lives. To find out, we invited Japanese students to share their vision on womenomics. We asked them: How do you envision your life in 2020 in the context of changing gender roles? What are the challenges that Japan needs to overcome to realize the kind of society you hope for in 2020?

Watch the videos from HagueTalks: Womenomics held in Tokyo, April 1st 2015 and see womenomics from the perspective of three socially engaged student speakers.

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