In January, when JAL Group, the parent company of Japan Airlines, named Mitsuko Tottori its next CEO, global media hailed the appointment as a victory for gender equality. Tottori, 59, is the first female chief executive in the carrier’s 73-year history. Unlike her male predecessors, many of whom graduated from elite Tokyo University, Tottori attended a little-known junior college for women and began her career as a flight attendant.
But if Tottori’s ascent is a breakthrough for Japanese women, in another sense, its novelty highlights the extraordinary durability of Japan’s glass ceiling. Of the 1,836 companies listed on the top-tier “prime” section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, only 15 were led by women, or less than 1%, according to a January 2023 report by credit research firm Teikoku Databank. On Japanese boards, women occupy 13% of the seats at the exchange’s prime market companies, compared with 32% and 33% respectively for firms listed on the U.S.’s Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange, and 40% at companies trading on European exchanges.
