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<ul><li>External Affairs Minister S <keyword id="19920247" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Jaishankar" source="keywords">Jaishankar</keyword> met his G4 counterparts in New York.</li><li>He reaffirmed the commitment to urgent reform of the <keyword id="19896118" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="United-Nations" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="United Nations" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="United Nations">United Nations</keyword> Security Council.</li><li>The <keyword id="23295228" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="G4-group" source="keywords">G4 group</keyword> includes <keyword id="19895063" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="India" source="keywords">India</keyword>, Germany, Japan and Brazil.</li></ul>External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met with his counterparts from Brazil, Germany, and Japan in New York to reaffirm the commitment of the G4 grouping of nations to urgent reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) through text-based negotiations. The G4 countries comprise Brazil, Germany, India and Japan. Jaishankar, who is in the United States on an official visit, met with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, and Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira on the sidelines of the 79th Session of the United Nations <keyword id="20282473" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="General-Assembly" source="keywords">General Assembly</keyword>. <div type="twitter" handle="DrSJaishankar" handlename="DrSJaishankar" favoritecount="0" retweetcount="0" id="1838342963296113025"></div> Jaishankar shared a picture of the meeting on X and wrote, "Glad to join the traditional #G4 <keyword id="23295229" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Foreign-Ministers-Meeting" source="keywords">Foreign Ministers Meeting</keyword> along with colleagues @ABaerbock , @Kamikawa_Yoko and Mauro Vieira in New York today. G4 reaffirmed its commitment to urgent United Nations Security Council reform through text-based negotiations." Jaishankar also held talks with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil, discussing energy, health, and economic cooperation between India and Venezuela. <div type="twitter" handle="DrSJaishankar" handlename="DrSJaishankar" favoritecount="0" retweetcount="0" id="1838351671992188990"></div> "Pleased to meet FM @yvangil of Venezuela today on the sidelines of #UNGA79. Discussed energy, health and economic cooperation, as well as reformed multilateralism," Jaishankar said on X. On Monday, Jaishankar met with Bangladesh Foreign Affairs Advisor Md. Touhid Hossain and discussed a range of issues related to mutual interests between Bangladesh and India. On the sidelines of the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the two diplomats discussed a range of issues on strengthening the long-standing ties between the neighbouring nations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh, announced the meeting in X, formerly Twitter, emphasising the ongoing partnership between the two countries. The general debate of the 79th session of the General Assembly opens on September 24 and will continue through September 28 and conclude on September 30. Opening amid growing calls for more international cooperation to address challenges such as climate change, poverty and inequality, and tackling the fallout from ongoing conflicts and global health crises, the session will see world leaders heading to New York to deliver their statements in the iconic Assembly Hall. The theme for the general debate of the 79th session of the General Assembly is "Leaving no one behind: acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future generations," according to the UN Nations' official statement. With inputs from ANI. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/sebi-report-reveals-the-ugly-truth-of-fo-trading-in-india-93-of-retail-traders-incurred-losses/articleshow/113620397.cms">SEBI report reveals the ugly truth of F&amp;O trading in India – 93% of retail traders incurred losses</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/gopro-hero-the-companys-smallest-4k-camera-launched-at-23990/articleshow/113591944.cms">GoPro Hero, the company’s smallest 4K camera launched at ₹23,990</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/telecom/news/jio-and-airtel-lost-subscribers-in-july-after-tariff-hike-bsnl-records-growth/articleshow/113548793.cms">Jio and Airtel lost subscribers in July after tariff hike, BSNL records growth</a>

Jaishankar reaffirms commitment to UNSC reform in meet with G4 counterparts

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Japan says a Chinese military intelligence aircraft violated Japanese airspace on Monday.</li><li>Japan scrambled fighter jets in response to the unprecedented incident.</li></ul>Japan accused China of flying a spy plane into Japanese airspace on Monday.China regularly deploys military aircraft into international airspace above the East and South China Seas, and into contested airspace, but this incident would be the first known time that one of its planes has directly violated Japanese territorial airspace.Japan's Ministry of Defense reported the unprecedented incident on Monday, noting that the Chinese Y-9 intelligence-gathering plane briefly entered Japan's airspace near the Danjo Islands, located to the southeast of Nagasaki.The Chinese military aircraft was in Japanese airspace for three minutes, from approximately 11:29am to 11:31am, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.mod.go.jp/j/press/news/2024/08/26d.html">per Japan's defense ministry</a>. Japan's Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets in response, but they didn't fire any weapons or flares.The Japanese defense ministry also shared maps of the Chinese Y-9's flight path.<div type="image" title="A map showing the flight path, colored in red, of a Chinese spy plane in the airspace around Japanese islands." height="515" width="800" msid="112815616" hostid="261" sizebytes="33138"></div>Per the map, the Y-9 briefly enters the territorial airspace for the Danjo Islands before circling around to return to China.<div type="image" title="A map showing a closer look at a Chinese spy plane's flight path in the territorial airspace of Japan's islands." height="562" width="800" msid="112815617" hostid="261" sizebytes="27636"></div>In response to the incursion into its airspace by the Chinese plane, Japan warned China against further reoccurrences, with the Japanese Foreign Ministry saying Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano summoned a senior official from the Chinese embassy in Tokyo to discuss this matter.China regularly operates <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-sub-hunter-planes-learned-watching-russian-sub-florida-2024-7">military aircraft in international airspace</a>, which international law allows. But Monday's event, per Japanese allegations, is the first publicly confirmed time a Chinese plane has entered Japan's territorial airspace.The incident comes at a precarious time for Chinese-Japanese relations, which have warmed in recent months after years of tense territorial disputes and trade spats. After a meeting with his Japanese counterpart last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said relations between the two nations were at a critical stage."China's policy towards Japan has always maintained stability and continuity. It is hoped that the Japanese side will establish an objective and correct perception of China and pursue a positive and rational policy towards China," Yi told Japan's Yoko Kamikawa in July per a Chinese Foreign Ministry readout.During their conversation, the two diplomats discussed various issues affecting the bilateral relationship, from the release of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant last fall to matters relating to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/red-flags-tell-us-when-chinas-ready-to-invade-taiwan-2024-4">Taiwan</a>.Although Monday's incident marks the first reported airspace violation, tensions in the air have long been something of a strain on the Chinese-Japanese relationship. Between April 2023 and March 2024, Japan scrambled jets over 600 times, mostly in response to Chinese military aircraft.

A Chinese military spy plane violated Japan's airspace for the first time, Tokyo says

Washington: Lauding the US-India ties, the <keyword id="19918915" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="White-House" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="White House" meta.hostid="153" meta.entityid="White House">White House</keyword> on Monday (local time) said that President <keyword id="99719" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Joe-Biden" source="Orion">Joe Biden</keyword> views the <keyword id="19900781" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="United-States" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="United States" meta.hostid="153" meta.entityid="United States">United States</keyword>' relationship with India as one of the most <keyword id="22766719" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="consequential" source="keywords">consequential</keyword> in the world, adding that both countries "work closely" on vital priorities. In a press briefing on Monday (local time), White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre said that the US works with India on key priorities, including the QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue). "So look, the president views our relationship, the United States' relationship with India, as one of the most consequential in the world. And so we work closely with India on our most vital priorities, including through the Quad and the US-India initiative on this critical and emerging technology," Jean Pierre said. She further emphasised how the US wants to expand its "critically important partnership" with India, moving forward. "And so we look forward to continuing to expand our critical and critically important partnership and how it's going to benefit the American people. And we want to create a more prosperous and secure Indo-Pacific and the world. And so that is going to continue to be our focus as we move forward," she added. The US has a diplomatic partnership with India, Australia and Japan, through QUAD, which is committed to supporting an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific that is inclusive and resilient. Notably, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Foreign Minister of Japan Yoko Kamikawa, and Australia's Penny Wong participated in the Quad Foreign Ministers' meeting held on July 29 in Tokyo. The leaders reaffirmed their commitment, common principles, and capacities to preserve and strengthen the international order for the global good. "We look forward to India hosting the next Quad Leaders' Summit later this year, and to the United States hosting the next Quad Foreign Ministers' meeting in 2025," a joint statement after the meeting held in Tokyo read. The Quad Foreign Ministers Meeting joint statement said that the countries of the bloc were collectively advancing a positive and practical agenda to support the Indo-Pacific region's sustainable development, stability, and prosperity, responding to the region's needs. The statement said that they contribute to a region in which all countries and people can exercise free choice in how they cooperate, and trade based on partnership, equality and mutual respect.

US-India relationship one of the most consequential in world: White House

Tokyo [Japan], November 21 (ANI): Japan has said that it is "directly approaching" <keyword id="2527856" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="houthi-rebels" source="Orion">Houthi rebels</keyword>, who recently hijacked an international cargo shop in the Red Sea, according to Al Jazeera. Tokyo announced on Monday that it is "communicating with Israel" in addition to other countries in an effort to get the Galaxy Leader released. The ship is notably owned by an Israeli businessman and is run by a Japanese company. The previous day, as the ship was travelling from Turkey to India, it was attacked by a group of rebels from Yemen. According to the group, Israel's "heinous acts" in Gaza were the reason behind the attack, Al Jazeera reported. The Japanese government has "strongly condemned" this action. Tokyo has asked other nations that are concerned--Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and others--to take part in efforts to get the rebels to promptly release the ship and the captives. In addition to directly addressing the Houthis, Tokyo is "communicating with Israel, and stated that it is also urging Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran and other countries concerned to strongly urge the Houthis for the early release of the vessel and crew members, according to Al Jazeera. "Our government will continue to take necessary measures in cooperation with the countries concerned while taking into account the situation," Japan's Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the hijacking of an international vessel by Iran-backed Houthis in the Red Sea on Sunday and called it a "very serious incident on the global scale." Taking to X, the Israeli PMO said, "Israel strongly condemns the Iranian attack against an international vessel. The ship, which is owned by a British company and is operated by a Japanese firm, was hijacked with Iran's guidance by the Yemenite Houthi militia." It also shared, "Onboard the vessel are 25 crew members of various nationalities, including Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Filipino and Mexican. No Israelis are onboard." Condemning the hijack, it said, "This is another act of Iranian terrorism and constitutes a leap forward in Iran's aggression against the citizens of the free world, with international consequences regarding the security of the global shipping lanes." Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that the ship was sailing from Turkey to India with an international civilian crew, without any Israelis aboard, and added, "This is not an Israeli ship," The Times of Israel reported. (ANI)

Japan 'directly approaching' Houthi rebels who hijacked cargo ship in Red Sea

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image">Koji Sasahara/APA woman walks past an electronic stock indicator in Tokyo. </div></div></div>Karen Kawabata represents the best of Japan's intellectual capital. She has just graduated from the University of Tokyo, the most prestigious in the country. 
Wry and poised, with an American mother and Japanese father, she has the languages and cosmopolitan attitude that Japanese companies particularly value nowadays. 
In April she will join McKinsey, a consultancy that should give her immediate membership of a globe-trotting elite.
Yet Ms Kawabata sees obstacles in her path. She is acutely aware of the difficulties she would face at traditional Japanese companies, should she find herself joining one. Ferociously long working hours, often stretching past midnight, are followed by sessions of "nominication", a play on the Japanese word for drinking, nomu, and the English word "communication"; these are where young hopefuls forge connections and build reputations. Nowadays women trying to impress the boss are allowed to drink plum wine mixed with plenty of soda instead of beer, says Ms Kawabata.
But that is hardly a great improvement.
Above all, she worries that having a family will be nigh on impossible to combine with a demanding career. When she met her boyfriend's father for the first time this year, she reassured him about her intentions at McKinsey. "I told him that I would rethink my career in a few years' time," she says.
That one of the brightest of Japan's graduates needs to say such things should worry Shinzo Abe, the prime minister. Japan educates its women to a higher level than nearly anywhere else in the world: its girls come near the top in education league-tables compiled by the OECD. But when they leave university their potential is often squandered, as far as the economy is concerned.
Female participation in the labour force is 63%, far lower than in other rich countries. When women have their first child, 70% of them stop working for a decade or more, compared with just 30% in America. Quite a lot of those 70% are gone for good.
<h2>Beyond the Festival of the Dolls</h2>
Mr Abe says he wants to change that. In April 2013 he announced that allowing women to "shine" in the economy was the most important part of his "Abenomics" growth strategy. Raising female labour participation to the level of men's could add 8m people to Japan's shrinking workforce, potentially increasing GDP by as much as 15%, according to Goldman Sachs, an investment bank.
More women working for more pay would also increase demand. Hence speeches from Mr Abe attaching new-found importance to matters such as the opening hours of kindergartens and the challenges of breast-feeding outside the home.
For the prime minister, who belongs to the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), this is quite a turnaround. In 2005, when a previous government was taking steps towards greater equality, Mr Abe and his fellow conservatives warned of the damage to family values and to Japanese culture that could result if men and women were treated equally.
They worried that rituals such as the hina matsuri, or Festival of Dolls, an annual celebration of young girls and the state of matrimony, could be endangered. Their concern was not just based on tradition; keeping women out of the workforce, conservatives thought, made economic sense too. If the country's "baby-making machines", as a former LDP health minister put it, stayed at home then they would produce more babies, and thus more workers.
This insight proved to be flawed. As the LDP encouraged women to stay at home, the fertility rate, already low, plunged further, bottoming out at 1.26 children per woman in 2005 before edging up to 1.41 in 2012. The consequent dearth of young people means that Japan's working-age population is expected to fall by 40% by 2050, exerting a powerful drag on the economy.
As a solution to this, the direct measure of getting more women out into the workforce would have great advantages over the indirect tactic of encouraging them to stay at home in the unfounded hope that they will breed instead.
Indeed, it may even turn out that working and having children go hand in hand. In other rich countries, higher birth rates nearly always accompany higher female employment, and in Japan itself the birth rate is higher in the countryside, where more women work, than in the big cities, where fewer do. The changes that might encourage more urban women into work--such as better child-care provision, and a less demanding corporate culture, which would mean shorter working hours for men and women alike--might encourage them and their husbands to have more children, too.
<h2>The missing salarywoman</h2>
Mr Abe's interest in all this is new; the problem is not. Yoko Kamikawa, an LDP politician, recently served on the party's new committee seeking to improve the lot of women. In the 2000s, during Mr Abe's first term as prime minister, she was his minister of gender equality. She is startled, she says, by the lack of progress since then.
In most countries women's participation in the labour force dips around the years when they marry and bear children; after that it recovers. But this M-shaped curve is much more pronounced in Japan than in most other rich countries (see chart 1). Japan's curve has levelled out somewhat in recent years: in 2004 the rate of full- and part-time employment for 30- to 34-year-old women was 61%, a figure which by 2012 had risen to 69%.
Yet young, married mothers are still largely absent from the workforce, and many women returning to work go into part-time or temporary jobs with low pay and little security.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image">The Economist</div></div>Those who stay in work often do so in jobs that waste their abilities. Few women hold professional, technical or managerial roles. In 2012 they made up 77% of Japan's part-time and temporary workforce.
Many of these workers are well-off married women seeking a little extra income. But others are poor and marginalised.
The precarious existence of such workers was described in "Out", a bestselling 1997 crime novel by Natsuo Kirino which had a resonance, and earned acclaim, beyond the borders of the genre.
The heroine, who spends her nights toiling in a soulless packed-lunch factory, helps conceal the murder of a colleague's no-good husband. Ms Kirino's subsequent bestsellers have also focused on the division of gender roles, describing men slaving away in the corporate world, disconnected from women in the home.
At the very top of corporate Japan, the "bamboo ceiling"--so-called by women for being thick, hard and not even transparent--is starting to let in some chinks of light, but they are few and far between. In 2011, 4.5% of company division heads were female, up from 1.2% in 1989. But relative to other countries the numbers are still dismal. Of the most senior, executive-committee-level managers in Japan, 1% were women in 2011, according to a regional study by McKinsey. The equivalent figure for China was 9%, for Singapore 15%.
Corporate culture is by far the biggest obstacle for Japanese women. The practice of hiring graduates fresh out of university and employing them for their entire working lives makes it difficult for employees to take career breaks and seek new positions elsewhere afterwards.
Promotion tends to be based on tenure and overtime, rather than on productivity and performance. And straightforward discrimination remains rampant. In a study that compared the reasons why Japanese and American college graduates leave their jobs, American women cited child care and looking after elderly relations as the main factors. Japanese women blamed dissatisfaction with their jobs and a feeling of being put into "dead-end" roles.
The fact that their husbands, who spend more time at work than their counterparts in other developed countries, spend less time on child care or household chores, adds to the perceived need to stay at home (see chart 2).
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image">The Economist</div></div>When Japanese firms take their pick of university graduates they choose men and women, but they still prefer men for management, sticking most of the women on the "clerical" track.
Foreign companies have been able to take advantage of this prejudice by hiring and promoting able female graduates, says Georges Desvaux, the head of McKinsey's Tokyo office, who also leads the firm's global research on the role of women in companies.
Overseas executives inside large Japanese companies tell tales of über-secretaries with the talent to run the whole business.
Keidanren, Japan's most powerful business lobby, has been markedly uninterested in doing much about this.
Though government pressure recently got the lobby to start internal discussions on promoting women, corporate leaders regard Mr Abe's new enthusiasm for improving the lot of women in the same way as they look on reforms to corporate governance: as costly distractions from the task of lifting Japan Inc's profits.
Keidanren refuses to ask its members even to state the number of women on their boards, in fear of being asked to increase it, or having quotas imposed. Bureaucrats seeking to find the number scan documents for the suffix "ko", usually found on female names.
Male dominance extends beyond the corporate world: in politics, too, women are grossly under-represented. In the lower house of the Diet, women hold only 8% of seats, with 19% in the upper house. In a global survey of women in parliaments, Japan ranked 123rd out of 189 countries. The older generation of men is particularly traditionalist, and still wields the most clout.
<h2>Pampered wife, wise choice</h2>
Yet women are not simply being held back by the patriarchy. When the choice is between leisurely dependency in the home--known as sanshoku hirune tsuki ("three meals and a nap")--and the sorry life of a salaryman there is something to be said for putting your feet up. In wealthy places like Tokyo many women simply do not wish to work, says Takeshi Niinami, chief executive of Lawson, a chain of convenience stores.
Mariko Bando, author of "The Dignity of a Woman", a bestselling guide for women on how to succeed in the workplace, points out that many Japanese women do not feel they need a high-status job to enjoy high status. A well-educated woman working part-time in a supermarket will not see that job as defining her identity if she is the wife of, say, a high-ranking Mitsubishi Corporation executive.
Remarkably, women seem to have become more conservative about work in the past few years. In 1979, 70% of women agreed with the statement that "The husband should be the breadwinner and the wife should take care of the home". By 2004 that had fallen to 41%. But in 2012, perhaps because of the recession in 2007-09, just over half said they preferred to stay at home. A survey last year showed that a third of very young women want to become full-time housewives. Potential husbands, meanwhile, were less traditionalist: only one in five young men said he wanted his future wife to stay in the home.
Feminism has remained a timid force in Japan. The long economic boom that began in the 1950s was a national priority which left little room for questioning traditional roles in the home or workplace, says Chizuko Ueno, Japan's best-known feminist. And women are not without power behind the scenes. Housewives control the family finances, and in the workplace so-called "office ladies" wield a lot of influence over the lives of salarymen, quietly hindering the careers of those they dislike.
There are, however, some indications that the role of women could change. For one thing, the boom that overrode all other interests is long gone. Stagnating wages mean the three-meals-and-a-nap way of life is less widely available, with households increasingly in need of two incomes. And the divorce rate is rising. More Japanese women are opting out of marriages to overworked and largely absent salarymen, and so thus increasingly need to fend for themselves. Although a portion of young women want old-fashioned gender roles, the rest, including the "parasite singles" who prefer living with their parents to marriage, want change.
<h2>Herbivore men, carnivore women</h2>
Some of the most motivated graduates nowadays are female, and a growing number of companies are waking up to the possibility of putting them to better use than in the past. According to Sakie Fukushima, a director of another business lobby, Keizai Doyukai, human-resources executives say in private that they would hire young women ahead of men most of the time. Yet they are afraid that they will lose them when they have children. Japan's female 20-somethings now tend to be far more internationally minded than their male equivalents, says Lawson's Mr Niinami. They outperform soshoku danshi, or "herbivore" men, so-called for taking low-responsibility jobs and preferring shopping to sex. These same young men have little desire to follow the breadwinner/housewife model adopted by their parents. Indeed, Japanese media have recently, with some surprise, begun to note a trend towards young fathers taking on more child care.
In some corners of corporate Japan, firms are changing the old working practices. At DeNA, an internet-services company, employees have noticed that their colleagues in California never stay late at the office, instead continuing their work at home. They are now starting to follow the American example, says the company's founder, Tomoko Namba. A few firms are trying to increase productivity while shortening hours. Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, a leading blue-chip, is discouraging workers from staying in the office after seven o'clock.
By 2020 Mr Abe wants women to occupy 30% of all "leadership" positions--which would include members of parliament, heads of local government and corporate executives. His most practical step has been to try to shorten waiting lists for child care by allowing more private companies into a previously state-dominated sector. Here he has seized upon the work of Fumiko Hayashi, the mayor of Yokohama, who after being elected in 2009 managed to reduce the city's child-care waiting list, then the longest in the country, to zero in just over three years. A former senior saleswoman at Honda, BMW and Nissan, she brought private firms into the sector. Mr Abe wants to expand her "Yokohama method" across the country.
Yet many Japanese women, who are particularly protective of their children, distrust day care (one reason women in the countryside have more children is that they are more likely to have parents nearby to lend a hand). What is required, more people now argue, is an army of foreign nannies. In January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Abe suggested Japan's immigration rules could be eased so that foreign workers could help care for children and elderly relatives, another duty that falls most heavily on women. There have been unconfirmed media reports that the government is considering allowing in as many as 200,000 foreigners a year to work in areas such as construction, child care and nursing.
As with much of the country's ambitious programme of structural reform, however, such a loosening will face high political hurdles. Immigration is unpopular with the Japanese public; insiders note that Mr Abe may say such things in Switzerland, but has not given public voice to them in Japan.
Until overseas talk is followed by domestic action, many will think Mr Abe lacks the will to push for changes that would greatly improve the life of working women. His actions so far have not impressed. A request that firms allow mothers to take three years of maternity leave--compared with the 18 months they can take now--met with derision from all sides. Companies said it would cripple them; feminist critics said that it was part of the old agenda to keep women in the home. The target of 30% women in leadership roles by 2020 was first proposed in 2003 by then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. "The target is an old one, and it was not implemented," says Yuriko Koike, head of public relations for the LDP and a former defence minister. The deadline arrives in only six years; there is little chance it will be met. The idea of reducing waiting lists for child care, too, dates back to Mr Koizumi's time in office.
Some of Mr Abe's allies frequently remind voters of the prime minister's former traditional views on the family. In January Michiko Hasegawa, whom Mr Abe had approved as a board member at NHK, Japan's national broadcaster, published a column saying that women's most important task was to bring up their children, and that this should take priority over working outside the home. "The message on women is somewhat mixed," concludes Ms Koike.
If the government really wants to increase female employment, argues Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs, it could do so by axing tax rules that keep women's earnings low. The "head of household", normally a man, is allowed to claim a tax deduction of ¥380,000 ($3,700) as long as his spouse's income does not exceed ¥1.03m. The pension system, too, encourages limited earnings. As long as a wife's annual wages remain under ¥1.3m she can claim the national pension without paying any premiums. Tackling such privileges, however, could cost the LDP the votes of millions of housewives and their husbands.
At a private dinner in Davos Mr Abe listened to a small group of senior women, including a former head of state, discuss what Japan should do differently. An awkward moment came when one of the guests, Miki Tsusaka, a partner at the Boston Consulting Group, told him she had dreaded returning to Japan after a successful career spent mostly in New York. Yet increasingly, behind their soft tones and feminine demeanour, many Japanese women are getting ready to break out of their dolls' house. If the country's policymakers can find the right ways to help them, those women could boost the economy and reform corporate culture. Both they and their sararimen stand greatly to benefit.
Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist

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Jaishankar reaffirms commitment to UNSC reform in meet with G4 counterparts

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A Chinese military spy plane violated Japan's airspace for the first time, Tokyo says

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US-India relationship one of the most consequential in world: White House

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Japan 'directly approaching' Houthi rebels who hijacked cargo ship in Red Sea

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