July 5, 2012

For Women, Japan's Academic Ladder Needs Major Repair

A dearth of female leaders at top universities alarms government

For Women, Japan's Academic Ladder Needs Major Repair 1

Torin Boyd for The Chronicle

A mother picks up her child at day care on the campus of the U. of Tokyo. This is one of seven such facilities at the university, the most prestigious in Japan, where only 17 percent of the faculty is female, compared with 43 percent in the United States.

Enlarge Image
close For Women, Japan's Academic Ladder Needs Major Repair 1

Torin Boyd for The Chronicle

A mother picks up her child at day care on the campus of the U. of Tokyo. This is one of seven such facilities at the university, the most prestigious in Japan, where only 17 percent of the faculty is female, compared with 43 percent in the United States.

By David McNeill

Tokyo

The alumni of Japan's most prestigious university include no fewer than 15 prime ministers, seven Nobel Prize winners, and thousands of elite bureaucrats who have run this country for over a century. The University of Tokyo, known in Japan as Todai, is regularly voted Asia's top institution of higher education. Yet in its entire 130-year history, it can point to just a single female department head—in the 1970s.

The dearth of female academics at the top is hardly surprising.