Making Japan a place where women can shine

Economic growth in Japan has been limited due to a labor shortage and low productivity growth. The average economic growth rate in the total economy was 0.94% per annum for the period 1990-2011, a substantial decline from 4.53% per annum in the period 1970-1990, and was caused mainly by a negative labor service input growth and a sharp decline in total factor productivity growth. In the May issue of the RIETI Report, we present the column "Making Japan a place where women can shine" by Faculty Fellow Tomohiro Inui, Makiko Nakamura (Keio University), Kazuma Edamura (NISTEP), and Junko Ozawa (Cabinet Office), and originally posted on the VoxEU.org website.

Inui et al. look at the Abenomics policy, of which a major component is "Womenomics" which has the goal of increasing the female labor participation and boosting the percentage of women in leadership positions to 30% by 2020. Achieving sustainable economic growth requires more efficient use of Japan's labor force, and a problem that the country faces is an insufficient effort in utilizing the abilities of its highly educated female workers in particular. Looking at studies from other countries, there is a positive relationship with an open culture toward diversity and innovative performance, among other findings. However, new studies from Japan suggest that board diversity is not associated with innovation across firms in general, but that if the firm already has the management skills, then diversity helps it become more innovative. Finally, Inui et al. discuss the Japanese government's effort to attract foreign firms, especially from countries with less gender bias, which may contribute to increasing the chance for Japanese firms to learn diverse management techniques and increase innovative performance through management spillover.

Please visit our Facebook page for the latest publications and new updates.
https://www.facebook.com/en.RIETI