Japan is set to approve a plan to promote gender equality, but in a sign of conservative lawmakers' worries about a breakdown in traditional values, the document warns against doing away with all sex-based social distinctions.
The new plan, to be approved by the cabinet on Tuesday, aims to increase women's presence in leadership positions in all fields to 30 percent by 2020 - a tough target given that the proportion of female managers in Japan was 9 percent in 2003 compared with 46 percent in the United States, according to the International Labour Organisation.
The plan also includes measures to help women return to work after leaving to raise children, to encourage their entry into fields such as science, technology and disaster relief, and to eradicate violence against women, according to a draft approved by the government's Council for Gender Equality on Monday.
"Prime Minister (Junichiro) Koizumi said that he wanted the cabinet to approve the plan quickly and that he was determined to create a gender-equality society in which men and women can have dreams and expectations by fully exercising their individuality and abilities," Kuniko Inoguchi, state minister for gender equality, told a news conference after the council meeting.
Two decades after the enactment of an Equal Employment Opportunity Law, Japanese women lag those in many advanced countries in terms of political clout and earning power.
Japan ranked 43rd out of 80 countries in 2005 terms of a "gender empowerment" rating, the plan noted.
Faced with a shrinking labour force due to Japan's sagging birth rate, many Japanese companies are stepping up efforts to mobilise women managers and workers more fully.
But in a nod to concerns among some conservative ruling lawmakers about fraying traditional values, the plan defines "gender" as a value-neutral term and warns against trying to eradicate all gender-based customs, from separate changing rooms for school kids to a traditional dolls festival for girls.
"To deny sexual differences using the term 'gender free', to do away with masculinity and femininity and differences between men and women, and to aim at the neuterisation of human beings, or to deny the family and traditional culture such as the dolls festival differs from the society of male and female equality sought by the people," the plan states.
Advocates of improving the status of Japanese women have expressed worries that the phrasing reflects a backlash against recent progress toward gender equality
Inoguchi, however, defended the wording.
"We decided to include for the first time a clear definition of 'gender' to resolve misunderstandings," she said, adding there had been cases of "confusion" when local authorities had tried to implement gender equality programmes in the past.