What Is Womenomics, and Is It Working for Japan?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe thinks he’s found an answer to Japan’s shrinking workforce: The vast ranks of women who’ve been excluded from or held back in the workforce. Abe has outlined goals to create a “Japan in which women shine.” He’s pushing policies to encourage and enable women to work and have a family at the same. There’s even a catchy phrase, "womenomics," part of the prime minister’s broader Abenomics plan hatched in 2014 to lift Japan out of decades of economic stagnation. But while womenomics has seen some progress, it has yet to sparkle.

It’s the idea, closely associated with Abe but also discussed around the world, that the advancement of women and economic development are necessarily linked. In Japan, as well as getting more women to work, Abe wants them to fill 30 percent of leadership positions by 2020. He’s working to fix daycare shortages and encouraging workplaces to be more accommodating, so mothers will feel more inclined to rejoin the workforce. There’s some urgency: Japan has the world’s oldest and most rapidly shrinking population, with the 15-64 age group forecast to fall to 45 million people in 2065 from 77 million in 2015.