Japan Data
Gender and Sex
Work
Economy
Sep 8, 2025
The proportion of female managers at companies in Japan crept up by just 0.2 points year on year to reach 11.1%.
A survey of 26,196 companies across Japan conducted in July 2025 by Teikoku Databank found that the proportion of female managers crept up by 0.2 percentage points year on year to 11.1%. 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 42.3% of the total.
While the proportion of female executives also showed a slight rise of 0.3 points to 13.8%, all executives are male at 52.1% of companies.
Some 31.8% of companies expect the proportion of female managers to increase. This soars to 72.7% 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.
Meanwhile, just 13.0% of companies overall expect the proportion of female corporate directors to rise.
The government has also set targets of 19% in 2025 and 30% in 2030 for the proportion of female executives at companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime market. For this reason, 32.7% of these listed companies expect the 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 61.9% of the companies surveyed, followed by “gender-neutral job assignments and postings” at 51.5% and “making it easier for women to take childcare and nursing care leave” at 34.1%. Meanwhile, 19.8% of the companies are working on the government-backed policy of “promotion of childcare and nursing care leave for men,” in a 2.3-point increase over the previous year.
(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)
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AloJapan.com