The percentage of companies led by women presidents continues to rise, hitting 8.4% in 2024, up from 8.3% the previous year and 8.0% in 2020, according to a report released Friday by Teikoku Databank.
Since 1990, the ratio has almost doubled.
Teikoku Databank has the largest commercial repository of information on Japanese companies, including privately held businesses. Its report on women in leadership roles is based on entries covering 1.19 million companies.
In a separate study released earlier this year, it found that 10.9% of all managerial positions at Japanese companies were held by women, a record and the first time the reading broke 10% since the data was first compiled in 2013.
In addition to showing a steady increase in the percentage of companies led by female presidents, the recent report also revealed a lot about where women are leading and the profile of these leaders.
Female presidents tend to be found at smaller companies, with 11.9% of companies with less than ¥50 million in annual sales having a female boss. For companies with ¥10 billion in sales or more, the ratio is 2.0%.
“There’s a huge difference in being the CEO of a small company and leading as the face of corporate Japan,” said Tracy Gopal, founder and CEO of Third Arrow Strategies and the Japan Board Diversity Network.
Of the companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime market, fewer than 1% were led by women as of January 2023, according to a Teikoku Databank study.
Mitsuko Tottori, named president of Japan Airlines earlier this year, is one example of a woman who has broken the glass ceiling at a large Japanese company. Tottori has said she hopes to “embolden” female employees to climb the corporate ladder.
“If we don’t make corporate life attractive, then there’s going to be no women in corporate Japan,” Gopal said. “As the opportunities broaden, that whole traditional salary ecosystem needs to evolve. It needs to be more entrepreneurial, more exciting, more flexible, less hierarchical, more merit based.”
Officials in Japan have rolled out a series of proposals and policies over the years in an effort to increase the number of women in leadership roles in Japanese business.
„Womenomics,“ spearheaded by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has been at times credited with improving female representation in the workforce at large, but not in terms of higher paying and better positions with corporations.
Japan aims to increase the percentage of managerial positions held by women to at least 30% by 2030. The labor ministry has proposed rules that would require companies with more than 100 workers to disclose the percentage of top posts held by women.
Broken down by type of business, real estate led, with 17.4% of all such companies being headed by a woman, according to the Teikoku Databank report. Construction was the lowest, at 4.9%. By subdivision, 40.0% of day care companies were led by women, compared with only 2.6% of metal joinery companies.
By university, Nihon University led, with 286 female graduates leading Japanese companies, followed by Keio University, with 266, then Waseda, at 239. By prefecture, Tokushima Prefecture led, with 12.1% of companies having female presidents, followed by Okinawa, at 11.6%.