Sam Nussey, Mayu Sakoda

TOKYO, Reuters – Glassdoor’s owner Recruit Holdings claims it would like to see 50% women within the next 10 years. This is a remarkable pledge for a nation where men still dominate politics, the government and the civil services.

Ayano Senaha, the Chief Operations Officer of Japan’s biggest staffing agency, stated that there is a diversity drive for bright ideas and more women to be at the top of Japan’s highest levels.

According to data compiled by Reuters, 21% of Recruit’s top executives (including heads of major business units) were females as of April 1. This is compared to 10% a year ago.

Senaha stated that it was a survival strategy – and makes economic sense to Reuters during an interview. We don’t make things like many Japanese companies. Instead, we get new ideas from our employees to launch new services.

Japan’s oldest society is Japan. Many Japanese graduates are still expecting to work for one company their whole lives.

According to MSCI index data, while three quarters of Japanese companies have at least one female director, only 5% of them have more than two, MSCI’s data shows.

Contrary to this, approximately two thirds of the companies in America, 85% in Britain, and 100% in France employ at least one female director.

Recruit has a young workforce, with half of them being women. Senaha, 39 years old, was elected to the board of directors in June 2020. She is now the youngest female director.

In April 2021, she took over her current position. As a way to speed up its diversity drive, the company also announced its pledge one month later.

Senaha declared, “We require that pressure.”

Recruit will name Keiko Honda as an outside director of its 10-person board. This is at the annual shareholder meeting next month. Eiko Kono was Recruit’s female CEO from 1997 through 2004.

Nicholas Benes, an expert in corporate governance said that “It is a wonderful first step” and that they will continue to expand on this initiative and make all the details public.

Benes who is the Board Director Training Institute of Japan said, “Diversity must also include foreigners and nationality,”

Recruit acquired U.S. job site search engine Indeed in 2010 and Glassdoor, a job review portal. These purchases have boosted overseas revenue by approximately half the amount of the total company. It is valued at $60 billion.

Rony Kahan (co-founder of Indeed) is the sole foreigner on the board.

Since then, the Japanese prime ministers has stressed the importance of Japanese companies becoming more diverse and offering flexible work.

Companies are now encouraged to set diversity targets under revisions to Japan’s corporate governance code. Keidanren, a business lobby group, has called for 30 percent of executive officers to be female by the end the decade. However such voluntary actions have a poor record.

Japan’s long hours of work are still a major drawback. Many women continue to drop out after children, but this is not surprising. Many men do not take paternity leave.

This story refiles to delete extraneous sentences from paragraph 4. It also adds a dropped word to paragraph 14.