No Improvement for Japan in 2025 Gender Gap Ranking

Bottom in G7

Japan’s position remained unchanged at 118th in the Global Gender Gap Report issued by the World Economic Forum on June 12, 2025, which ranked 148 countries in terms of gender equality.

The WEF report analyzes various statistical data on the status of women using four categories: economy, education, health, and politics. The gender gap index is based on 1.00 being the highest possible score, indicating that gender parity has been achieved, while 0.00 means complete gender disparity.

Among Group of Seven countries, Britain was ranked the highest in terms of gender equality, leaping ten places to fourth overall. Germany (9) was the next-highest G7 country, followed by Canada (32), France (35), the United States (42), and Italy (85). Japan was the only G7 nation to fail to place within the top 100.

Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s October 2024 cabinet only included two female ministers (10% of the total), which was a significant drop from the five (25%) in Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s cabinet the previous year. This led to Japan dropping in the ranking for politics from 113th to 125th.

2025 Global Gender Gap Index Rankings

Created by Nippon.com based on data from the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2025.

Data Sources

• Global Gender Gap Report 2025 from the World Economic Forum, 2025.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)