Japan

Japan's Shinzo Abe on Friday named the country's first ever female aide to the prime minister, just weeks after Caroline Kennedy arrived as the first woman US ambassador to Tokyo, AFP reports.

Makiko Yamada, a 53-year-old internal ministry veteran, will advise the conservative prime minister on policies affecting women, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

Two Japanese women started “All-Japan Obachan Party”, a political party that aims to balance the gender gap and to increase women rights, as well as women’s presence in the government. The party was established six months ago as the result of a Facebook comment and now has more than 2,000 members, while the numbers are still growing.

The return to power of Japan’s conservative and hard-line Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Sunday indicates that voters traded urgently needed social and environmental reforms for traditional male-led leadership, according to analysts here.

Japanese women have less clout in companies and politics than women in other advanced countries, the government said in a report that highlighted the need for steps to help women balance jobs and their personal lives.
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When it comes to female participation in politics, Japan lags far behind other nations.If Japan is going to catch up with the countries that boast a high percentage of female politicians, women must create a nationwide movement, according to panelists at a symposium advocating more women in politics."It's something that has to be fought for and refashioned by each generation," Kari Hirth, an official at the Norwegian Embassy in Tokyo, said at a symposium held Saturday in the capital sponsored by the Tokyo-based Alliance of Feminist Representatives.

The Democratic Party of Japan has promoted women and younger candidates who have not risen through traditional routes to power.The display of hyperactivity was deliberate, and not just because Ms. Kushibuchi is anxious to win every last vote she can. Her party, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is "projecting a new image compared to the old politics," she says, "an image of energy."
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Japan's parliament will look radically different when it formally elects Hatoyama as prime minister at a special session in the middle of next month. The lower house will contain 158 first-time MPs, just over 90% of them from the DPJ, and a record 54 women, 40 of them from Hatoyama's party. The chamber's 480 MPs have an average age of 52, with the youngest aged 27.