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Nearly 60 female lawmakers in Japan, including the prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, have submitted a petition calling for more toilets in the parliament building for women to match their improved representation.
Japanese politics remains hugely male-dominated, although the number of women in the parliament rose at the last election – and Takaichi became the first female prime minister in October. This is reflected by there being only one lavatory containing two cubicles for the lower house’s 73 women to use near the Diet’s main plenary session hall in central Tokyo.
“Before plenary sessions start, truly so many women lawmakers have to form long queues in front of the restroom,” said Yasuko Komiyama, from the opposition Constitutional Democratic party.
She was speaking after submitting the cross-party petition signed by 58 women to Yasukazu Hamada, the chair of the lower house committee on rules and administration, earlier this month.
The Diet building was finished in 1936, nearly a decade before women got the vote in December 1945 after Japan’s defeat in the second world war. The entire lower house building has 12 men’s toilets with 67 stalls and nine women’s facilities with a total of 22 cubicles, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
Japan ranked 118 out of 148 this year in the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap report. Women are also grossly under-represented in business and the media.
In elections, women candidates say that they often have to deal with sexist jibes, including being told that they should be at home looking after children.
Seventy-two of 465 lower house lawmakers are women, up from 45 in the previous parliament, as are 74 of the 248 upper house members. The government’s stated target is to have women occupy at least 30% of the legislative seats.
Takaichi, an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, said before becoming prime minister that she wanted “Nordic” levels of gender balance in her cabinet. But in the end she appointed just two other women to her 19-strong cabinet.
Takaichi, 64, has said she hoped to raise awareness about women’s health struggles and has spoken candidly about her own experience with the menopause. But she is still seen as socially conservative. She opposes revising a 19th-century law requiring married couples to share the same surname, and wants the imperial family to retain male-only succession.
The increasing demand for female toilets could be seen as a sign of progress in Japan although it also reflected the country’s failure to achieve gender equality, Komiyama said.
“In a way, this symbolises how the number of female lawmakers has increased,” she told reporters, according to her party’s website, adding that she hoped for more equality in other areas of life.
