Japan Press Weekly

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2020 October 7 - 13 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JCP receives 22K signatures calling for gender parity in politics

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira on October 7 in the Diet building met with civil groups, “Parité Campaign” and “Voice Up Japan”, working to promote gender parity in politics and received a petition with 22,000 signatures calling for increasing the number of female candidates in the next general election.

JCP Vice Chair and Gender Equality Commission Chair Kurabayashi Akiko also attended the meeting.

The petition points out that the rate of female members in the House of Representatives stands at only 9.9%. It requested all political parties to make efforts to increase the number of women lawmakers. In order to achieve this, the petition calls on political parties to set numerical targets for female candidates excluding incumbents in the next Lower House election so that half of the total will be women. In addition, the petition demands that political parties draw up a proportional representation list which has an equal number of male and female candidates with a female-male alternative order.

In receiving the 22,000 signatures, Koike expressed his support for the petition. He pointed out that Japan is far behind among advanced capitalist nations in the promotion of gender equality as shown by the fact that women’s participation in policy and decision making processes is still extremely low.

Koike explained that the JCP in the revised Party Program seeks to establish a gender-equal society, and that 54% of the party’s candidates for the next general election are women. He expressed his determination to continue working hard to increase the percentage of women among JCP lawmakers.

Past related articles:
> Japan drops to record-low of 121st place in global gender equality ranking [December 18, 2019]
> Among political parties, JCP has longest list of female candidates for Upper House election [July 6, 2019]
> JCP has the most female local assemblymembers among political parties [February 4, 2019]