By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) – The secretaries handing out ballots as Japan’s ruling party chose the next prime minister on Wednesday were all women. The majority of the power brokers and legislators voting were men.

The race for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party’s ruling party saw two women compete. Because of their parliamentary dominance, the winner will take office as the premier.

They faced all the challenges that they had to overcome, as did every Japanese woman. Hundreds of men from LDP gathered in rows to vote for their new leader.

Fumio, the winner of the contest, spoke out about diversity. However, not many people believe that there will be significant positive change in a nation with just 8.1% female presidents and less than 10% of its parliament members being women.

Momoko Nojo, youth activist, said “The right environment to allow a woman in the prime minister’s office has not been created.”

It’s not like there aren’t potential leaders. But, just by looking at voting, it was clear that LDP legislators and when you take a look at how many women are in parliament, it is still quite low.

Japan ranked 121 among 153 countries in 2020 in the World Economic Forum’s global rankings of gender parity. This is compared with 101 when Shinzo Abe was elected prime minister.

An internal investigation in 2018 revealed that the nation’s major medical school had been making it difficult for women to pass their entrance exams.

The two candidates for the party leadership race, Sanae Takaichi (the incumbent) and Seiko Noda (the former), were considered longshots from the beginning despite their decades of political experience and cabinet experience.

Of the two candidates, Takaichi is the most popular. This was partially due to Abe’s support, but also because of her conservative views such as opposing the use of separate surnames in marriage and supporting male-only succession to the Imperial family.

His government had to postpone its goal of increasing the number of women leaders in Japan by 10 to 30% from 2020, despite Abe’s “womenomics”, which he vowed would make Japan “a country where women can shine.” Most Japanese companies have a female workforce of less than 10 percent.

Koichi Nakano from Sophia University, a political science professor, said that the (LDP), is also very far behind in gender equality. The kind of women in higher leadership positions are, of course-often, conservative and therefore not necessarily feminists.

Tokyo’s women also agreed.

Yuko Sakamoto (60) said, “They all preach gender equality but it all seems just a show this year.”

That’s quite obvious.