Japan’s efforts to make it easier for women to work are faltering. Women’s participation in the workforce is high but their status is low

SHINZO ABE, Japan’s prime minister, is an unlikely champion of women’s empowerment. A lifelong conservative and the leader of a party that for decades battled feminism, Mr Abe has undergone a conversion, prompted by Japan’s alarming demography: the workforce is projected to shrink by about 25m people—well over a third—by 2060. Meanwhile, millions of university-educated women sit at home, their talents squandered, says Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs. “Japan has more to gain than most countries from raising female labour participation.”

Yet, four years into Mr Abe’s stint in office, and 17 years since Ms Matsui coined the term “womenomics”, the government is still struggling to make Japanese women “shine”, its clumsy rhetorical catchphrase for raising the standing of women at work. The latest gender-gap index published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks Japan 111th out of 144 countries, a fall of ten places since 2015. Just 9.5% of the members of Japan’s lower house are women, putting the country 155th in the world by that measure. Under Mr Abe, the number of female directors at Japanese firms has inched up—to a paltry 2.7%.

The government takes credit for adding about 1m women to the workforce since 2012. At 66%, the female participation rate is now among the highest in the world, says Masako Mori, a former minister of state for gender equality. That is largely the result, say critics, of Japan’s drum-tight labour market rather than of innovative policies. Mindful that most of these jobs are far down the corporate totem pole , the government has also revived a decade-old target of having women occupy 30% of “leadership positions” by 2020. But it admits that this goal is nowhere near being met.

The government has done more to improve women’s lot than these statistics suggest, insists Haruko Arimura, a former minister in charge of women’s empowerment: “For the first time ever we are talking not about if women should be in charge, but how.” Ms Arimura helped pass a landmark law last year aimed at ending corporate sexism. Companies and bureaucracies with 300 or more employees must reveal how many female workers and managers they employ, and set targets for promoting them. The aim, she says, is to shame male bosses into doing better.

Public opinion is clearly shifting. For the first time most Japanese people agree that mothers should be allowed to continue their careers, according to a new survey by the Cabinet Office. A string of stories has appeared in the media on the once-overlooked problem of matahara (a portmanteau of “maternity” and “harassment”). The fact that roughly 47% of women leave work after having children has occasioned much hand-wringing, too. It is especially unfortunate, the WEF notes, since Japanese women are healthier, better-educated and longer-lived than their peers almost anywhere else in the world.

Ms Arimura, a mother of two, recalls the petty harassment she suffered when she opted for a political career: “People said they felt sorry for my children and husband.” She believes such attitudes can be fought with public leadership and greater state support. The government has promised to end a chronic shortage of child care by the end of next year. A trickier problem, she acknowledges, may be calcified working practices.

Male workers still dominate the most important, full-time positions at Japanese companies. For most of them, long working hours make doing their share of child-rearing impossible. Labour reforms introduced a decade ago, meanwhile, have accelerated the growth in the number of temporary workers, of whom an outsize share are female. The trend towards a bifurcated workforce, largely divided by gender, continues under Mr Abe, says Ayaka Shiomura, a member of Tokyo’s metropolitan assembly.

Companies and unions are loth to dismantle Japan’s employment system, but without more flexible labour practices, womenomics will fail, warns Nicholas Benes, the head of the Board Director Training Institute of Japan. He wants to see a new type of hybrid contract, with sabbaticals and alternative career paths for mothers, alongside the standard path for other employees. Parliamentary discussions on workplace reforms are under way, but the outcome remains uncertain. Some companies, desperate to keep workers, are already converting irregular positions to full-time ones, says Ms Matsui. Whatever happens, Mr Abe’s achievement, she says, has been to change female empowerment from a human-rights issue to an economic imperative. “That’s a big shift.”