Japan Elects 1st Female PM 80 Years after Universal Suffrage

Tokyo, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)–Sanae Takaichi was elected Japan’s first female prime minister Tuesday, 80 years after women in the Asian nation gained suffrage. This means that Takaichi, president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, broke the country’s highest glass ceiling, although women’s participation in politics has still been limited. Women in Japan gained the right to participate in politics in 1945, following the country’s defeat in World War II, thanks to the efforts of female activist leader Fusae Ichikawa and others. Thirty-nine women won House of Representatives seats in the following year’s election for the lower chamber of parliament. On the back of the global wave of female empowerment movements following International Women’s Year in 1975, Japan enacted legislation such as the equal employment opportunity law for men and women in 1985 and the basic law for gender- equal society in 1999. In 2018, the parliament passed a lawmaker-led legislation urging political parties to equalize the number of male and female candidates in elections. Although some progress has been made in women’s participation in Japanese society, the country was ranked 118th out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Index. Gender inequality is especially evident in the political world, with women making up only 20.6 pct of all lawmakers in the Lower House and the House of Councillors, the upper chamber. The closest a woman has come to winning the prime minister’s post before Takaichi in Japan was Takako Doi, who led the former Social Democratic Party of Japan. As the first female leader of a national political party, Doi led a massive victory for her party in the 1989 Upper House election, stripping the LDP-led ruling bloc of its majority in the chamber. Doi won the ensuing vote for prime minister in the Upper House, but the LDP’s Toshiki Kaifu became the country’s head of government at the time as he was elected to the post by the all-important Lower House. Still, Doi was later elected Lower House speaker, becoming the first female leader of any of the three branches of the state. Meanwhile, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike was the first woman to have bid for the LDP presidency, a position which almost guarantees the prime minister’s post. She ran in and lost the 2008 LDP presidential election, before winning election as Tokyo’s first female governor in 2016. Takaichi, former internal affairs minister Seiko Noda and former Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa have been the only female candidates for the LDP presidency since then. The United States has yet to have a woman as president, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then Vice President Kamala Harris suffering defeats on Democratic Party tickets in the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections, respectively. As of the end of July this year, 82 of the 193 U.N. member states have had female presidents or prime ministers since the end of World War II, according to the U.S. think tank Council on Foreign Relations. Takaichi’s election makes the United States the only member of the Group of Seven major nations that has not had a female leader. Takaichi cites Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, who was in office in 1979-1990, as an ideal leader. The new Japanese leader represents a significant step in the country’s political history, as she was not born into a political family and initially did not have political connections or name recognition. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]