Japan Press Weekly

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2024 September 4 - 10 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JCP EC Chair Tamura talks with women’s NGO network

Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Tamura Tomoko and Vice Chair Kurabayashi Akiko, who is in charge of the JCP Gender Equality Commission, exchanged views with six officials of the Japan NGO Network for CEDAW (JNNC) at the party’s head office in Tokyo on September 3.

A meeting of the UN CEDAW Committee will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, in October and Japan’s report will be discussed. The Network will lobby directly to Committee members for the need to address the actual situation in Japan in order to ensure that it will be reflected in the meeting’s summary findings.

Japan has yet to ratify the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and it ranks 118th out of 146 countries in regard to women’s rights, according to the Global Gender Gap Index 2024.

Yamashita Yasuko of the JNNC, an honorary chair of the Japanese Association of International Women’s Rights (JAIWR), said that ratification of the Optional Protocol will allow individual reporting to the CEDAW, leading to raising Japanese women’s rights to international levels and correct indirect discrimination against female workers in workplaces.

Tamura said, “By international standards, gender inequality in Japan is extreme. I will take up this issue in the Diet and continue to work to improve the situation.”

Past related articles:
> Put end to LDP gov’t sticking to outdated family values to create gender-equal Japan [June 17, 2024]
> Women’s rights activists take to streets to push gov’t to ratify optional protocol to CEDAW [May 24, 2024]