More than Half of Japanese Companies Still Have No Female Executives
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Far Short of Target
A survey of 22,350 companies across Japan conducted in July 2026 by Teikoku Databank found that the proportion of female managers crept up by 0.2 percentage points year on year to 11.3%. The government target of having at least 30% of leadership positions held by women as soon as possible in the 2020s is still a long way off. Companies where all managers are men remain the largest group, at 42.1% of the total.
While the proportion of female executives also showed a slight rise across all companies of 0.4 points to 14.2%, all executives are still male at 51.5% of companies.
Looking ahead, some 29.6% of companies expect their proportion of female managers to increase, while 10.8% think the proportion of female executives will rise. The percentage expecting an increase in female managers soars by more than 40 percentage points to 72.5% for companies with more than 1,000 employees. Larger companies face greater pressure to make progress, as they are required to produce action plans and disclose figures on this issue.
The government has also set a target for women to make up at least 30% of executive boards at companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime Market by 2030. For this reason, 30.9% of these listed companies expect their proportion of female executives to increase, which is more than 20 percentage points higher than the overall figure.
The top measure used to promote the advancement of female employees was “gender-neutral performance evaluations,” mentioned by 64.2% of the companies surveyed, followed by “gender-neutral job assignments and postings” at 53.8% and “promoting childcare and nursing care leave for women” at 34.0%. Meanwhile, 20.0% of the companies are working on the government-backed policy of “promoting childcare and nursing care leave for men.”
Data Sources
- Data from survey of corporate attitudes toward promoting women (Japanese) from Teikoku Databank
(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)