Japan drops in gender equality ranking

Japan ranks 121st out of 153 countries on the global rankings for gender equality, falling 11 places since the last audit in 2018, marking its lowest level on record, the World Economic Forum, or WEF, said on Tuesday.

The report, which is also known as the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, was released by the Swiss institute which organizes the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

Based on data in four key areas－politics, economics, education and health－the WEF analyzes gender gaps on a regular basis and said it would take 100 years to close the global gender gap because so little progress had been made in tackling the problem.

In this year's report, Iceland is ranked as the nation closest to achieving gender parity, closing 88 percent of its gender gap, followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden.

"Japan's gender gap is by far the largest among all advanced economies and has widened over the past year," the report said, adding that only 15 percent of senior and leadership positions are held by women in Japan, whose income is around half that of men.

In Japan, women lawmakers accounted for 10.1 percent of the Lower House and 5.3 percent of Cabinet ministers. The average global rate is 25.2 percent and 21.2 percent, respectively.

For this year, China ranked 106th, down three places on the list, with a low representation of women in politics and corporate management to blame, the report said. The report also gave China credit for having closed "two-thirds of its gender gap" and "having virtually closed the educational gender gap, with both sexes achieving universal literacy".