When Tomoko Yoshino, the first woman to lead Japan’s largest labour federation, says gender equality requires “wide-ranging social change,” it is not rhetorical feminism. It is a diagnosis. The problem she is describing is not simply a shortage of women willing to step up inside unions, but a labour movement built around male life patterns, male career trajectories and male assumptions about who has time, authority and legitimacy to lead.
Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) represents roughly seven million workers and sits at the heart of Japan’s postwar labour system. Women now make up around one-third of union members nationwide, a proportion that has steadily increased over the past two decades as female labour force participation has risen. Yet this numerical presence does not translate into power. Across enterprise unions, industry federations and regional bodies, women remain strikingly under-represented in executive roles. In many enterprise unions, fewer than one in seven officers are women; in top decision-making posts, the proportion is often in the single digits.
This gap reflects the structure of Japanese unionism itself. Most unions are enterprise-based, tied closely to large companies and organised around lifetime employment norms that historically assumed a male breadwinner supported by a wife managing home and childcare. Leadership roles require long hours, evening meetings, travel and informal networking — expectations that still collide with the reality that women, even when working full time, carry the bulk of unpaid care labour. Union work, largely unpaid and layered on top of demanding jobs, becomes yet another shift women are expected to absorb.
Gendered role allocation inside unions compounds the problem. Women who do become active are disproportionately channelled into “soft” portfolios: equality promotion, welfare, communications or member support. Men dominate wage negotiations, political strategy and high-stakes bargaining — the pathways most likely to lead to senior leadership. The result is a circular logic: women are deemed inexperienced in core decision-making because they are rarely given access to it.
Tomoko Yoshino has been unusually explicit in naming these contradictions. In a series of recent interviews, she has pointed to the way women’s careers are disrupted by spousal transfers, rigid corporate hierarchies and assumptions that caregiving is a private issue rather than a labour issue. Her argument is that unions cannot advocate for gender equality in society while reproducing inequality in their own governance. That message carries weight precisely because it comes from within the system, not from its margins.
Rengo has, on paper, made gender equality a formal priority for years. It has adopted action plans encouraging female participation, conducted gender audits and urged affiliated unions to set numerical targets for women in leadership. Some industry-level unions have introduced quotas or minimum representation rules, and public-sector unions — where employment is more stable and work hours somewhat more predictable — show higher proportions of women officers. But progress at the enterprise level, where most union power originates, remains slow and uneven. Only a small minority of enterprise unions have formal gender targets written into their rules.
Resistance is rarely framed as opposition to equality. Instead, it appears as procedural caution: concerns about fairness, fears of tokenism, or claims that leadership should be “merit-based.” Yet these arguments ignore how merit itself is structured by access, time and visibility — all of which remain gendered. Without deliberate intervention, existing hierarchies reproduce themselves while appearing neutral.
The labour movement’s gender gap also mirrors broader patterns in Japanese society. Women remain under-represented in corporate management, politics and public decision-making, and Japan consistently ranks low among advanced economies on global gender-gap indices. Unions do not operate outside this ecosystem; they reflect it. But because unions claim to speak in the name of fairness, dignity and social justice, the contradiction is sharper — and harder to ignore.
There are signs of change, albeit incremental. Younger women entering unions are more likely to articulate gender equality as a collective issue rather than a personal struggle. Campaigns around harassment, work-life balance and parental leave have gained visibility, particularly as labour shortages force employers to confront retention and burnout. The COVID-19 period, which exposed the fragility of care systems and the unequal impact of crisis on women workers, has also pushed some unions to reframe caregiving as a labour issue rather than a private inconvenience.
Still, the central challenge remains cultural as much as institutional. As long as union leadership is modelled on uninterrupted male careers and unlimited availability, women will continue to be filtered out — not through explicit exclusion, but through structural exhaustion. Yoshino’s insistence on “wide-ranging change” speaks to this reality. Gender equality in unions cannot be achieved through representation targets alone; it requires rethinking how leadership itself is defined and supported.
For Japan’s labour movement, the question is not whether women belong at the table — that debate is largely settled. The question is whether unions are willing to redesign the table so women can actually sit there, speak, and shape outcomes. If they cannot, the risk is not just internal inequality, but declining relevance in a workforce that is increasingly female, precarious and unwilling to accept institutions that preach solidarity while practising exclusion. In that sense, gender equality is not a side issue for Japan’s unions. It is a stress test — one that will determine whether the labour movement can adapt to the realities of contemporary work, or remain anchored to a past that no longer exists.
I’ve met Japanese female trade unionists. Not on panels, not on glossy brochures, but in meeting rooms with bad coffee, fluorescent lighting, and agendas that run three hours too long. They are some of the toughest women I’ve ever encountered. Iron-willed, meticulous, endlessly prepared — and unfailingly polite. The kind of polite that does not mean soft. The kind that survives decades of being interrupted, sidelined, and thanked instead of listened to.
They speak calmly while dismantling bad arguments piece by piece. They wait their turn — and then take the floor with surgical precision. They know the labour law, the company bylaws, the internal politics, the unwritten rules, and exactly who is pretending not to understand. They have survived systems that were never designed for them and learned how to bend those systems without breaking themselves. Mostly.
And every time I meet them, I think the same thing: why on earth are these women not running the unions already?
Japanese unions love to talk about fairness, harmony, collective voice. Beautiful words. But scratch the surface and you still find leadership cultures built around male careers, male availability, male stamina. Evening meetings, endless drinking sessions, power exercised through proximity rather than transparency. The message to women is never explicit — just quietly exhausting. “You’re welcome to join, as long as you can live like us.”
These women do not complain much. That’s not how they were trained. They document. They endure. They negotiate. They take on the unglamorous portfolios, the equality committees, the welfare work, the emotional labour that keeps organisations functioning while others posture at the top. And still, they are told they are “not ready” for leadership.
Not ready? Please.
If Japanese unions were rational organisations, these women would already be in charge. And honestly, not just the unions. Some of the companies too. I’ve seen how they prepare, how they listen, how they hold the long view without losing their temper or their focus. Imagine wage negotiations run with that level of discipline. Imagine crisis management without ego contests. Imagine workplaces where “work-life balance” is not a punchline.
Of course, that would require men to step aside. Or at least step back. And that is always the hardest reform.
So yes, I’ll say it plainly. These women should take over their unions. And if a few boardrooms happen to fall next? That would not be a revolution. That would simply be competence rising to the surface — finally.
Polite does not mean powerless. It never has.