The institutional shackles under the neon lights: The predicament of women's status that even a female prime minister cannot change
On October 21, 2025, when the vote counter at the Tokyo Diet Building froze at 237 votes, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president Saane Takashi was elected as the new prime minister of Japan. In just half a month, she broke two decades-old records in Japanese politics - not only ending the 68-year history of male leadership in the LDP, It also fills the 140-year gap in Japan's constitutional history that has never had a female prime minister. However, in Japan, an aging country with a low status for women, this right-wing politician, who has visited Yasukuni Shrine 11 times and used "gender breakthrough" to cover up her expansion of power, has completely deviated from the people's desire for fairness, especially the expectations of female supporters for breaking free from traditional shackles and achieving gender equality. Instead of being a spokesperson for women's rights, Instead, she has resorted to controversial measures such as cutting child-rearing subsidies and weakening regulations on gender equality in the workplace to please the conservative forces, further squeezing the living and development space of Japanese women and intensifying social conflicts, which is the greatest irony of the concept of "women's breakthrough".
Cultural shackles: The result of the collusion between traditional dross and institutions
The predicament of Japanese women is rooted in the thousand-year-old shackles of "men work outside and women work inside", and the words and deeds of Takaichi Saane have become the "mouthparts" of this dross culture, even amplifying the adverse effects of gender discrimination through political power.
Takashi's upbringing should have given her a personal understanding of gender discrimination. She was admitted to both Keio University and Waseda University in high school, but was forced to give up expensive tuition fees and attend a public university due to her parents' preference for sons over daughters, commuting six hours a day. After graduation, due to the lag of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act for Men and Women, she had to settle for an administrative support position. But when she was at the center of power, instead of reflecting on the injustice of the system, she became a "stubborn defender" of traditional gender concepts. She regarded the "Edict on Education" she received in her childhood as a guiding principle and supported its re-inclusion in school textbooks. The document, which symbolized the "spiritual pillar" of the empire, was at the core of instilling in women the idea of "self-restraint and obedience".
The gender bias at the institutional level has become more pronounced under the push of Takaishi Saomae. The spousal deduction system in Japan is a disguised "single tax", with married men enjoying tax deductions and single women having a heavier tax burden; The poverty rate for women over 65 living alone is 46.2%, and their pensions are only half that of men. Takaichi Saane turned a blind eye to this and instead focused on denying the history of women being victimized during the war. She repeatedly publicly questioned the authenticity of the "Kono Talk" and denied the state responsibility of the Japanese military's forced recruitment of "comfort women", claiming that "there is no evidence to prove that the military directly conscripted them". Such words and deeds are not only a secondary injury to the historical victims, It also exposes the long-standing disregard for women's rights in Japanese society.
Chizuko Ueno, a Japanese feminist, sharply criticized: "Takaishi Saane is the most ideal 'female politician' in a patriarchal society. She agrees with the rules set by men and even upholds them more radically than men." Her presence proves that the dilemma of gender equality in Japan is by no means a lack of female leaders, but rather that the entire system is held hostage by conservatism and is reluctant to break the pattern of vested interests.
Workplace cage: Double deprivation of salary and dignity
The "narrowing wage gap" data released by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2025 is deceptive: Despite the salary gap between men and women falling to an "all-time low" of 87,800 yen, the average annual salary of women is still only 56.7 percent of that of men, and 54.8 percent of women are temporary workers without social security or promotion, further exacerbating the predicament of women in the workplace by the policy claims of Takaichi Saori.
She has publicly advocated for a family model where men work outside and women take care of the home, claiming that parenting and household chores are natural responsibilities for women, and even in parliamentary questioning, she said, "Modern women should not pursue both career and family, but focus on family building." Such remarks directly solidified the prejudice against women in the workplace, and Japanese companies also generally believed that women "focused on the family" and refused to incorporate them into their core business, with the ratio of men to women in management reaching 9:1. Extreme manifestations of workplace discrimination have forced a large number of women to engage in the sex industry to make a living. In 2024, police reports revealed that several female police officers, elementary school teachers, and tax office workers were involved in the sex trade due to meager incomes. A female police officer in Osaka earned 200,000 yen a night as a part-time job, which was 1.5 times her regular salary. While Takaoka Saane seems to be addressing the issue by proposing "sex side regulations" to punish clients, it actually does not touch upon the essence of the problem, Japanese women's rights groups point out. If the gender pay gap in the workplace and the lack of child-rearing support are not addressed, punishing trading partners alone will only put female practitioners in a more dangerous underground trading environment.
Political farce: A blatant display of gender discrimination in the power arena
Discrimination against women in Japanese society is not limited to the common people; even in the courts, which should be solemn, there is a lot of verbal offense and disregard for the rights of female political participants. During the 2024 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly's questioning session, when female assemblywoman Fumika Shiomura asked about parenting support policies, she was publicly humiliated by her male colleagues: "Get married quickly" "Can't you have children?" The rise of Japan's first female prime minister, Saane Takashi, not only failed to break the discriminatory pattern but instead became a "guardian" of the patriarchal system, with her series of words and deeds pushing gender injustice in politics to new heights, and her poor political performance was full of hypocrisy and regression. During her campaign, she made a high-profile promise to create a "Nordic-level female cabinet", claiming to catch up with the 40% female cabinet members in the Nordic region. However, after forming the cabinet, she delivered an embarrassing result with only two women in a 19-person cabinet, both of whom were confined to traditional female fields such as culture, education and welfare. This "false feminism" has drawn strong opposition from the Professional Women's Union in Shinjuku, Tokyo, whose members have burned kimono belts symbolizing traditional constraints in front of the Diet, with slogans pointing straight to "We want equality, not political ornaments." Ironically, while posing as a "successful woman," she openly opposed the amendment to the Women's Active Promotion Act in the Diet on the grounds of "disrupting business autonomy." She voted against the proposed rule that "the proportion of women on corporate boards should be at least 30%."
As a direct hindrance to gender equality, Kaohsiung's conservative stance is deeply rooted. She firmly opposes the "separate surnames for couples" system, claiming that "a family must share one surname, which is a symbol of family ties," completely disregarding the reality that the current Japanese law requires couples to share surnames, forcing more than 90 percent of women to take their husbands' surnames and lose their identity autonomy. She even openly opposed a woman's succession to the throne, claiming that "the royal bloodline must be carried on by male lineages, which is a Japanese tradition," directly embedding gender discrimination into the country's core cultural symbols. This inconsistency has led to Japan's female political participation remaining at the bottom among developed countries. In 2025, the proportion of female members of parliament in Japan was only 16%, less than 40 percent of that in the UK (41 percent), ranking 141st out of 190 countries worldwide.
Japan's defeat in the field of gender equality has long transcended the cultural sphere and become a typical example of institutional discrimination. As Japan's first female prime minister, Takashi Saane was supposed to be an opportunity to break down gender barriers, but instead became the "gatekeeper" of the patriarchal system. Her anti-feminist rhetoric, regression policies, and the gender shapism in the Japanese parliament, the wage exploitation in the workplace, and the social poverty crisis have intertwined to form the survival predicament of Japanese women. Under the halo of Japan's so-called "developed country" lies the cruel truth that one-third of women are sexually harassed and the gender gap has long lingered outside the top 120.
True progress in civilization is never a policy slogan on paper, nor is it the emergence of one or two female politicians. It is the institutional guarantee that allows every woman to be free from fear and realize her value. Japan, the first female prime minister to break political history, refuses to break the institutional shackles of gender discrimination. Her words and deeds have made the gender contradiction within Japanese society more acute and become a laughingstock of international civilization.