Womenomics 5.0: Twenty Years On

In 1999, Goldman Sachs Research Strategist Kathy Matsui published a seminal research report on “Womenomics,” exploring how much Japan’s GDP could grow if more women were in the labor force. In this episode of our series The Long & Short of It, Matsui reflects on the progress we’ve seen in the past 20 years and where challenges remain. “The good news is the numbers are up,” she says, citing the government’s embracing of Womenomics and campaign to expand access to public daycare as just some of the drivers behind Japan’s now-record female participation rate. “The bad news is there’s still a very stark gap in gender pay, partly related to the fact that a lot of these women are working in part-time as opposed to full-time roles,” Matsui explains. Other areas of improvement she discusses include Japan’s dearth of female leadership, insufficient caregiving capacity, and unconscious biases.