The incident highlights ongoing struggles with gender parity in Japan—which ranks lowest among G7 member states on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index.
When asked how he felt being the only male representative, Ogura, a Cabinet minister, said that male leaders with strong enthusiasm for gender equality are still needed,
The reason I'm asking if this is what he is saying, is because he said it in the context of him being the leader.
If he's referring to his own leadership role then by saying men are needed he effectively is suggesting this, yes.
If he's not referring to his own leadership role, then he's sidestepping the question of why a man is in charge of/has power over a women's empowerment event.
I understand that, but you've literally just tacked extra words onto what he said that completely twist the meaning of what he said, and then asking if he's saying that.
Even if you're only asking not saying, it's overtly cynical and borderline a strawman argument. Like "I'm not saying he beats his wife, I'm merely asking if he does!" Its' really not fair to twist someone's words like that unless you have good reason to assume he is speaking in bad faith.
What he said was "male leaders with strong enthusiasm for gender equality are still needed" -- that's not controversial at all, but tacking something on to make it cynical and nasty is.
he's sidestepping the question of why a man is in charge of/has power over a women's empowerment even
Maybe... but I think the answer to that is probably something as simple as Japan made the choice (however boneheaded it was) to send a man to the meeting as their representative, and since the meeting was in Japan, he was the chair. It's usually better to assume ignorance than malice.
I mean, if genders are equal then an equal number of men and women should be leading in matters of gender equality.
And there are real issues that stem from this. If you make it so that under-represented people always lead initiatives to improve representation, you are adding workload to the under-represented people involved in the <activity> (governance in this case), and making them even more under-represented in the rest of the activity.
The optics in this case are bad enough that the downsides of sending a candidate chosen in a gender-neutral fashion outweigh the upsides, but I'd definitely advise being cautious about assuming that's always the case. If anything it's the exception, not the rule.
And where do you think a woman has more power? In a meeting on women's empowerment, or a meeting on... I don't know... how many weapons to give to Ukraine?
If you pull women away from the latter to send them to the former that is negatively impacting women's empowerment.
Like I said, the optics in this case make it worth it anyways, but it is not a clear cut rule where that is always the case, and it's easy to do it too often.
I'm struggling to understand why you think these specific women (and man) who are leaders on social empowerment are also going to be military logistics experts who are being pulled away from that field.
Rather I think they're diplomats in senior government rolls, because they're at the G7. In US terms think state department, not DOD.
Regardless the exact nature of the other meeting isn't the point. The general fact that DEI work is usually not the most impactful work you can be doing in terms of personal development and growth in the organization is, so saying that under-represented people need to lead it harms under-represented people.
I don't really understand US terms, but the man concerned is a Cabinet Minister, not a diplomat.
(A cabinit minister is the equivalent of if you had a high-up Senator who was in charge of overseeing policy in a sector, I guess).
So it's very much an elected leadership role.
Historically when we have had members of a majority in charge of Government portfolios/policy sectors that mainly affect minorities, I don't think you can credibly argue that was somehow "better for" under-represented people than being able to participate directly in leadership roles themselves.
Deciding which policies will benefit women in leadership roles is arguably of more direct benefit to the lived realities of women, than helping decide where/how to help arm soldiers in a war somewhere else in the world.
There's enough women out there that sending one as a delegate to a women's empowerment conference is not going to require pulling one out of a meeting about Ukraine armaments.
There's actually a lot of women around. So, so many. It's actually a little intimidating just how many women there are.
The optics in this case are bad enough that the downsides of sending a candidate chosen in a gender-neutral fashion outweigh the upsides, but I'd definitely advise being cautious about assuming that's always the case. If anything it's the exception, not the rule.
That's fair, but also beside the point. This isn't a conference on equality (which should have a fair number of male representatives). It's a conference on female empowerment. Yes most conferences of this nature shouldn't be female only, but this is a pretty obvious exception imo. So obvious, it's not really worth bringing up the alternative scenarios.
It's a shame that you're getting downvoted for this. You make an excellent point.
This is literally the only news article I have seen about The G7 Ministerial Meeting on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment, and guess what? It's about a man being there. There's very little about what the meeting actually accomplished.
The optics are bad, for sure, but would Time have even written a piece about this meeting if the scandal of a man being involved wasn't there? Is this anything more than countries just making a token display by shunting some women off to Nikko for a photo op? Why is the name of the man involved mentioned in the article, but not one of the women's names is mentioned?
The entire piece seems set up like a fluff piece so that people can scoff at Japan for being such shit about gender equality, while feeling good about themselves, patting themselves on the back, and saying "Mission accomplished!" Even the media is playing along. Haha, Japan bad, other countries good, here's an article about a man!
This is literally the only news article I have seen about The G7 Ministerial Meeting on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment, and guess what? It's about a man being there.
Lol task failed successfully?
You're making a pretty good point. These conferences don't really DO anything. They're mostly box ticking and networking. And photo ops.
The "World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index" is pretty batshit insane. Areas were women have an advantage don't count, so it's just a manipulated answer to a loaded question.
If this was a meeting on gender equality rather than female empowerment your reaction would make more sense. The two concepts are similar but different and apply to different social contexts.
Equality is a political goal, empowerment is the actions we collectively take today regardless of our patchwork of political realities. Do we need men to be the leaders of female empowerment in places where women do not yet feel even close to equal to men? Maybe this would make sense in some places, counties where women leaders are ubiquitous like New Zealand and Finland (they arent really ubuquitous , merely moreso than the rest of the world). But that's really up to the women to decide who empowers them when they feel disenfranchised by their country's establishment.
So do you think Japanese women feel inspired and empowered by this guy? Or is it better interpretiert as tonedeaf homework put forth by someone who didnt understand the assignment?
Last year I went to a technical/professional conference where one of the highlighted topics was "Empowering Women in [Niche Technical Field X]." To my surprise, both of the speakers were men and neither had ever worked in [Technical Field X]. One was an ex-Football player. I forget what the other dude did for a living before he started the lecture circuit.
Both had daughters, though, so that apparently qualified them to speak. The other thing that qualified them was the fact that they were both men. They explained this. They needed to speak because "no one listens to women when they whine" about inclusion or equity or how to solve concrete problems.
The takeaway was: Want a voice at the table, ladies? Then ask a man to speak on your behalf and let them give the other men a good stern talking to. (And buy my book.)
Yeah, allies are great. I get it, thanks. But this was just really fucking stupid.
The conference was a mixed bag, but I left that pair a particularly blistering review on the conference feedback channel. Honestly, it was so bad that I took extra care with reviewing the other speakers just so it was clear I wasn't a troll (or an ungrateful bitch who couldn't understand that these guys were being super magnanimous).
At least my manager got a good laugh out of the story.
it basically just means "true to yourself and authentic without regard to what others think about you". it's sort of evolved to be a way to signify approval of some view or another
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