Japan remains 118th in 2025 gender gap report, worst among G7
GENEVA (Kyodo) -- Japan remained at 118th among 148 countries in the gender gap rankings in 2025, still worst among the Group of Seven nations, affected by poor political participation by women, the World Economic Forum said Thursday.
The report by the Swiss think tank showed Japan improved women's participation in the economic arena, but ranked 125th in political empowerment, reflecting how few female government ministers it has and the fact the country has never had a female prime minister.
The country lags far behind other G7 advanced economies, with Italy ranking second-lowest at 85th but still well ahead of Japan, according to the report, which tracks progress toward gender equality in the fields of economy, politics, education and health.
While the world has seen major improvements in women's economic participation and political empowerment, the think tank estimated it "will take 123 years to reach full parity globally."
Japan recorded the most progress in economic participation and opportunity, reflecting the increased presence of women in the workforce, but remained poorly ranked at 127th in the category showing female participation in management positions.
The country's overall performance slightly improved from last year, scoring 0.666 compared with 0.663 in 2024. The benchmark used in the study ranges between 0 and 1, with 1 being full parity between men and women.
Japan's progress in narrowing the gender gap has been slow, with its score improving marginally from 0.6447 in the 2006 edition, below the average trend of improvement for the 100 countries analyzed since the report's inception.
In 2025, Iceland topped the overall ranking, followed by Finland and Norway. New Zealand was the highest-ranked country in the East Asia and Pacific region in fifth place and Japan was 17th in the area.
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