Episode #213: Subtle Discrimination Against Women In Japan

Change happens slowly in Japan. Getting more women into leadership positions requires a lot of other moving parts to kick in. One of them is changing the mindset of male line managers regarding who to select to go to company training.

Discrimination against women in business in Japan takes many forms. Previous Pime Minister Abe talked about targets for women in leadership positions in companies but not much has changed. In fact, he significantly lowered the targets after barely getting started on the campaign. I am a Rotarian in Japan and it is male bastion still. Rotary is a vast international organisation with the purpose of connecting diverse professions together, to build better networks and to contribute to the community.

In Japan, the majority of rotary clubs do not have women members. My own was the same until a few years ago. Every year since I joined in 2002, we have had internal debates about accepting females into our club. The “no women” faction basically aged and passed on.

Of course, there were no regulations stating that women could not join, but the reality was women could never pass the selection protocol because of their gender. Happily that era has now passed and we now have some female members.

Who are these men in Rotary. They are businessmen ranging from small local business owners to the mightiest captains of industry. My club is full of the latter. In Japan, Rotary just adds another layer to those male connections built up at school and University.

Rotary around the world continues to grow in memberships but not in Japan. Up until 2000, Japan was leading the world in recruiting new members and since then has spiraled down. Since opening the doors up to women in business, it has finally begun to turn around.

Facing a steadily declining membership, did the captains of industry embrace the reality and accept women to stem the haemorrhaging of the numbers. No, they hung in there as long as possible to avoid it.

I feel that we are finally getting somewhere in Japanese business. My club is very large, rich, conservative, powerful and the average age of our members is around 70. If even my club members could finally accept the requirement to have women, then this reflects broader social change and the better acceptance of women in business in Japan. These guys are running Japan’s biggest corporations, so one hopes that progress here means there will be progress inside their companies.

Today, we see our corporate training classes composed of about 70% men and 30% women. Where are the rest of the women? They are not selected for training, because their company’s Middle Management team is still basically a male only club. How can we get women into leadership positions if we don’t train them so that they can rise through the company hierarchy? The classes should be 50/50 to reflect the population at large.

There are lot’s of diversity trainings going on, but for the most part the wrong people are being focused on. Of course, giving women more training is a great idea, but we need to train their male bosses as well. Whenever we discuss diversity training with Japanese clients, they are wholly focused on up-skilling the women employees. When we suggest that is fine, but a more holistic solution means bringing the men into the picture and better educating them about how to lead their women staff, we find we are still plumbing a new idea here. Leading and managing are different - managing means supervising the processes within the company. Leading means setting the strategy, supervising the processes within the company and it means building the people. “People” here includes women. Leadership in Japan needs men to think in these terms, because, like my Rotary Club, long term decline is guaranteed unless changes are made.

We won’t see women meeting the Japanese Government’s original leadership target, unless we get the male bosses to change first. We can skill up the women as much as we like, but their male bosses are the ones who recommend them for promotion, increased responsibilities and training. Like my Rotary, there are no regulations preventing women from being considered, but magically the male staff get the nod more often than the women when deciding who to invest in.

We are literally running out of young people, we are an aging society, we need women to be actively involved in business. Let’s start with male Middle Management and bring forth the changes Japan business needs in order for the country to continue to succeed in the future.