2025 POLLS: Women Making Up Less Than 30 Pct of All Candidates

Tokyo, July 4 (Jiji Press)--Women account for less than 30 pct of candidates competing in the July 20 election for Japan's House of Councillors, the upper chamber of parliament.

A total of 522 people filed their candidacies Thursday, when the official campaign period for the triennial Upper House election started. Of them, 152, or, 29.1 pct, are women.

Both the number of female candidates and their share were the second highest on record for an Upper House election, after 181 and 33.2 pct in the previous 2022 poll.

But the situation is far from sufficient in light of the country's law for promoting gender equality in politics, which calls on political parties to make the number of male and female candidates as equal as possible. The proportion for the July 20 poll also failed to meet the female candidate target of 35 pct set for this year under the government's basic plan for gender equality.

Japan ranked 118th among 148 countries in the World Economic Forum's global gender equality rankings for 2025, released last month.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]