Toward Gender Parity in Japan: Who Supports Gender Quotas and Why?

Gender equality continues to pose a significant challenge in Japan, particularly within the political sphere. The enactment of the Gender Parity Law in 2018, which encourages political parties to aim for gender parity in candidate nominations, marked an important milestone in addressing this imbalance. However, its effectiveness remains a subject of debate. While the adoption of legal gender quotas represents a potential solution, such measures are often met with controversy. In this talk, I explore public support for gender quotas in Japan, focusing on the characteristics of those who endorse such measures and examining the framing strategies that are most persuasive to Japanese voters.

Mari Miura is Professor of Political Science, Faculty of Law at Sophia University and a Visiting Scholar at Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University (2024-2025).  She is co-founder of the “Academy for Gender Parity,” which provides training programs for young women to run for office and an academic advisor of the all-partisan parliamentary group to promote women’s participation in politics in Japan. Her Ph.D. is from University of California, Berkeley.

She is the author of Welfare Through Work: Conservative Ideas, Partisan Dynamics, and Social Protection in Japan (Cornell University Press, 2012), Farewell to Male-dominated Politics (in Japanese, Iwanami Shinsho, 2023, Ishibashi Tanzan Award, Hiratsuka Raicho Award), Making Our Voices Heard—Revival of Representative Democracy (in Japanese, Iwanami Shoten, 2015), editor of Japan’s Women Representatives (in Japanese, Asahi Shimbun Shuppansha, 2016), co-editor of Gender Quotas in Comparative Perspectives: Understanding the Increase in Women Representatives (in Japanese, Akashi Shoten, 2014). She received the Wilma Rule Award (IPSA Award for the Best Research on Gender and Politics) in 2018 and was decorated the Knight of the Order of Merit from the French government in 2021.