Women Take Record Five Japan Cabinet Posts Even as Equality Lags

  • Men keep most major roles that lead to prime minister’s office
  • Kishida’s long-ruling LDP short of women at all levels
Fumio Kishida with his new cabinet in Tokyo on Sept. 13.

Photographer: David Mareuil/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

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Five women feature in Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s new cabinet lineup, equaling a record, yet the influx may not point to a gender equality breakthrough in a country that struggles to appoint female leaders in most fields.

Most prominent among the new appointments is Yoko Kamikawa, a veteran former Justice Minister who becomes the country’s first woman foreign minister in almost two decades. Kamikawa, 70, is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.