The incident highlights ongoing struggles with gender parity in Japan—which ranks lowest among G7 member states on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index.

The incident highlights ongoing struggles with gender parity in Japan—which ranks lowest among G7 member states on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index.

  • FiskFisk33@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    When asked how he felt being the only male representative, Ogura, a Cabinet minister, said that male leaders with strong enthusiasm for gender equality are still needed,

    this is true though

    • livus@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      They are needed in society, sure, but is he saying these men are needed to lead women in matters of gender equality?

      Because that’s the thing about this that’s raising eyebrows.

      • AshDene@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        I mean, if genders are equal then an equal number of men and women should be leading in matters of gender equality.

        And there are real issues that stem from this. If you make it so that under-represented people always lead initiatives to improve representation, you are adding workload to the under-represented people involved in the <activity> (governance in this case), and making them even more under-represented in the rest of the activity.

        The optics in this case are bad enough that the downsides of sending a candidate chosen in a gender-neutral fashion outweigh the upsides, but I’d definitely advise being cautious about assuming that’s always the case. If anything it’s the exception, not the rule.

        • osarusan@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          It’s a shame that you’re getting downvoted for this. You make an excellent point.

          This is literally the only news article I have seen about The G7 Ministerial Meeting on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, and guess what? It’s about a man being there. There’s very little about what the meeting actually accomplished.

          The optics are bad, for sure, but would Time have even written a piece about this meeting if the scandal of a man being involved wasn’t there? Is this anything more than countries just making a token display by shunting some women off to Nikko for a photo op? Why is the name of the man involved mentioned in the article, but not one of the women’s names is mentioned?

          The entire piece seems set up like a fluff piece so that people can scoff at Japan for being such shit about gender equality, while feeling good about themselves, patting themselves on the back, and saying “Mission accomplished!” Even the media is playing along. Haha, Japan bad, other countries good, here’s an article about a man!