Abstract
Despite the former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s Womenomics initiative in 2013, women in Japan represented only 3.5% of senior government jobs and 9.2% of the corporate sector’s director-level positions and ranked Japan 131st of 153 countries in terms of women’s participation in management roles. These data indicate that policies have fallen short of bridging the gender gap in the workforce as the deep-rooted gender norms in society have persevered. The present study explores the gender disparity from men’s perspectives and demonstrates why there is a need for men to use their position of power in women’s empowerment for the intended policies to succeed. The data was obtained through open-ended interviews with six male participants situated in Japan. The participants were asked to reflect on their leadership identities, the privileges their gender and position brought to them, and how they used their position of power to empower women. These findings should raise awareness of the role men can play in bridging the gender gap in the current patriarchal power structure.
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Egitim, S. (2023). Using Position of Power to Empower Women: Men in Action. In: Mayer, CH., et al. Women's Empowerment for a Sustainable Future. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25924-1_39
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25924-1_39
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