 Okay, folks. We're going to reconvene. Thank you. Thank you for staying and for the new arrivals for coming. And thank you to the previous panel for a really tremendous presentation and to all of the panelists for Tanaka-san for coming all the way from Japan, Amanda Vanden Duel for stepping in at the last minute and doing a terrific job, and for Eileen, I guess, for keeping Mike on the straight and narrow. So no, no, seriously, for all your contributions, that was terrific. So in this panel, we are going to zoom in on the question of Japan's own womenomics challenges and opportunities and policies and look at really what lies behind womenomics in Japan and why it's such an economic imperative. As Wendy said, this topic has a tendency to fadism, and this could be something perceived as a fad, but that's not the way I think Japan is looking at it or should look at it, because it's really an economic imperative for Japan's future, as I tried to describe in my opening remarks. So we're going to look a little bit at that economic imperative and at some of the challenges to women's fuller participation in the workforce in Japan and some of the solutions that have been proposed and some new ideas that I hope we can put on the table. We have an A-team panel here from your left of me down the line. Chad Steinberg, who is at the IMF, he's a senior economist and two years ago wrote a really terrific paper on this topic called Can Women Save Japan? And so he's going to present some of the findings, which are still relevant. I hope he'll update anything that needs updating, but Chad will do that first. Then he'll be followed by Ryu Matsukawa, who is the Director for Gender of the Gender Mainstreaming Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan. She was also instrumental in organizing the Wow Conference, the World Assembly for Women in Tokyo about 10 days ago, which I'm sure she's going to talk about in her remarks. Then next to her, we have our CSIS colleague, Miko Oyama, who is the K-danren, Representative K-danren is Japan's, obviously, as most people know, large big business organization, and she is their representative in Washington, and she also sits at CSIS as a fellow and his colleague down the hall from all of us. So we're delighted to have Oyama-san with us. And then at the very end is Robert Feldman, who is Managing Director and Chief Economist for Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities in Tokyo. Robbie is a well-known fixture to anybody who has been following the Japanese economy for the last, I don't even want to count, but I think I got my first briefing on the Japanese economy 22 years ago when I arrived as Assistant Financial Attache in Tokyo from Robbie. So he's been doing this a long time, and he'll be our anchor presenter. So with that, we'll get started. Chad. Alright, thank you very much. Although I was told not to have a PowerPoint, I have a PowerPoint. It's tough for some IMF economists to go without a PowerPoint, I'm told. Okay, so I have three sections. I'll try to keep it under 10 minutes. What I want to do is talk about motivation, a little bit on cross-country evidence that we found in our paper, and a little bit more on what are the Japan-specific hurdles, although I'm sure other people on this panel probably know a little bit more than I do on that topic. Okay, so let's start with the motivation. As most people know, Japan is aging faster than anywhere else in the world. And the consequence of this is that you have a labor force that's shrinking very fast compared to other advanced economies. Now you can see that in the left-hand side graph. Now looking at the statistics, basically the working force was about 87 million in the mid-90s, and it's projected to go about 50 million in mid-century. Now that's about the same size as Japan's workforce at the end of World War II. So it's a dramatic decline, and it's by far Japan's largest drag on growth. So if you think about Japan's potential growth rate around one to two percent, depending on how you measure economics, right, this just tracks from growth about a quarter percent. So that's relatively large. Now what do you do about it? Increasing labor is an obvious answer. Well, how do you increase labor? One way is immigration. Other ways is getting more people that are within Japan to participate more in the working force. Now if you look at the right-hand side graph, we show the difference between labor participation rates between females and males. And the gap is quite large for Japan. It's 25 percentage points. Japan has a similar structure. I mean, Korea has a similar structure, and it has also a high difference. But if you look at other OACD countries, it's usually between 10 and 15 percentage points, or if you look at the Nordic countries, it's around five. Just to be clear, this is the gap between men's and women's participation. So if you look at Japan, it's about 25 percentage points difference between the number of men working and the number of women working. And so this is 2009, so it might be a little different than everybody else's statistics. It's also looking at prime-age workers, which is basically between 25 and 54. So it detracts from the fact what people do about education and what people do about retirement. Okay, so basically looking at this, I mean, our paper basically is saying that raising LFP or female labor participation seems like an easy win for Japan. Okay, so let's move on to the cross-country evidence. I have two slides on this, but what I wanted to show everybody first was how labor participation rates compare across countries. So I have two histograms, one from 1985, which is in blue, and one from 2005 in red. And what you can see from this is that within the OACD, these are all OACD countries, so 22 countries, the female labor participation rates have been rising across the board. But they've also been converging. There's a much narrow distribution between the groups. Now, Japan has also risen over that time, but when it used to be right in the middle of the group, now it's near the bottom of the group. So what explains these changes? What we argue using a little bit more sophisticated econometric analysis is that a lot of this has to do with demographics. Some of the demographic variables that we look at are education for women. Of course, when women get more educated, the return to work is much higher. We also look at marriage rates and the number of children per worker. So the whole from home is much less when you get married later or the number of children you have is fewer than you might, you know, the demands from home are less than you're able to participate more in the workforce. So you see that on the right hand side graph, but all you see really is four lines going directly up. Trust me, it works out that these tend to explain a lot about the within country variation, meaning if you look at the U.S. over time, right, demographics explain a lot. If you look at Japan over time, it's a lot of the demographic spend a lot. But what we also argue in the paper is that it doesn't do as good a job in explaining differences across countries. Now, this is particularly noticeable, I think, in this one graph that people like to show is the relationship between the number of children per woman and female labor participation. On the Y-axis, you've got female labor participation. On the X-axis, you've got the number of children per woman. The left hand side is 1980. The right hand side is 2008. Now, the 1980 cross section basically shows that countries show a somewhat negative correlation. And this is what you expect. And lots of people say that, you know, if you get more female labor participation, you'll have less lower fertility rates, and that's bad for Japan's demographics, right? And so this is a common claim. But if you look, update those data and look at a more recent year, like, for example, 2008, it was the way I have here, the relation terms somewhat positive. And if you look in the bottom right, you mainly have the immigration countries, like Australia, USA, New Zealand. And if you take those out, it's even more steep. And if you see the Nordics are in the upper right corner, they seem to do very well in both having high labor participation rates for women and having high fertility rates. So it's not necessarily true in the cross section right now. So what this possibly highlights is that the importance of demographics diminishes or changes as countries demographics converge. As all of the advanced economies become more similar in terms of demographics, right, the policy differences matter more, right? And the core letter to that basically is that the onus for closing gaps between countries may now be on policies. Okay, so now briefly I'll enter into an area where I'm not as much of an expert as my colleagues, but we have a couple of hurdles that we thought were important to highlight in our paper. The first challenge that we saw for Japanese women was their limited opportunity to enter career positions or so-go-shoku, right? So in Japan, for big companies, they have two types of career streams. They have career jobs, which are called so-go-shoku, and non-career jobs, which are called ii-pan-shoku, right? Career jobs have a lot of human capital training involved in it. They have clear career paths, right? And also they get paid more. Now, obviously non-career jobs get paid less, right? They have much less training, and they do much less demanding tasks, and they're not nearly as interesting, but there are many women in that section. Now, it's hard to get statistics on this, but what I've put up here on the left-hand side is results from a survey from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, and it's a small sample, but it's telling. And what you see from it on the left-hand side, bars, is that the share of total career, women in career jobs, is a mere six percent, right? Six percent of people in career jobs is only women, right? Now, that's improving over time, so if you look at the middle bars, right, so in 2010, right, 12 percent of women were hired into these jobs. So slowly it's increasing over time because more women are being hired in the current market, but if you think if right now they're only hiring 12 percent of the career women are in these jobs, the max you can get to is 12 percent, which by maybe Western standards is a little low, right? So the obvious consequence of that is the right-hand sidecraft, which shows female managers across the OECD, and Japan is nine percent. Given that the career share of women in these jobs is only six percent, nine percent seems pretty good, but compared to some other countries of 43 percent, it seems pretty low. Okay, so the second hurdle is because I get to go first, I get to say the most obvious thing and show the chart that everybody always shows, and you know, it's basically that women's career is usually, I mean, the second hurdle is women's career is usually the return to work after childbirth, and you can see that in this M curve on the left-hand side. Now at the beginning of a women's career in their, you know, early 20s, participation rates are exactly the same across the OECD, right? But once you hit the late 20s and early 30s, women tend to drop out of the workforce, and you can see there's a dip in this M curve that's Japan is coming down, right? Over time this dip has become less and less, but the dip still exists. And the fact is that, you know, even today 60 percent of Japanese women quit working after giving birth to their first child. Now why do they do that? One of the reasons is the reason I put on the slide right before that is that they don't have very fun jobs, right? Lots of them don't not get into the career stream job, so they don't have great prospects for promotion, right? And so their pull to stay in the workforce is maybe less than men, right? But the other thing that everybody talks about is it's very hard to balance family responsibilities with work. I'm sure my colleagues are going to say a lot of things about this, so I think I will skip on the the various measures that you can use, but I can tell you a little bit of our empirical results show that, you know, there's not one policy that's going to resolve everything. You need a multitude of policies to be able to, you know, help women balance the responsibilities. Okay, so just to quickly summarize. All right. The messages of our paper were as follows. One, raising female labor participation seems like an easy win for Japan. Two, basically the cross-country evidence shows that over time demographics explains a lot why countries change their labor participation rates for females, but it doesn't explain as well the differences across countries, especially today. And the third point we just wanted to make is Japan needs to an even playing field in the labor market and make it easier for women to balance work and family. Okay, thank you. Thanks so much Chad. Really terrific lay down of the basic economic story here and I was struck by two things. One, that your point about policy mattering relatively more than demographics in recent times and that is going to be a good feed-in to some discussion of the policy issues at hand. And the second thing that struck me is that we need to do a conference like this on Korea because clearly Korea has a similar challenge and maybe a harder one. So Yu-san. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very nice to meet you and I would like to talk about the what's Japan's thoughts on the why Prime Minister Abe and our government is so much into this women's issue first and then and then also the programs that we are actually tackling on. And then first of all the Prime Minister Abe made a sensational speech at the last UN General Assembly half of his speech was devoted to women. He committed that he will make our society where women shine in Japan and also across the world. And then well the recent achievement his commitment is made at the World Assembly for Women which was held in Tokyo just 10 days ago and very fortunately I was in charge of that as a secretary. And then I can go forever for this wow event but because I have my 10 minutes and I'm going spontaneous I'll try to limit myself just to touch upon wow that it is the very first time for Japan to tackle this issue and by holding this international this kind of big international symposium. And it's not just a symposium because one it's new in many ways but let me point out one it's very comprehensive it has a very comprehensive agenda not only focusing women non-mix but also the other pillar is about the women's empowerment in global issues. So it's really comprehensive and then it's initiated by top leader. I mean there are many are Madame Clinton is very keen on the women issue everybody knows or the former foreign minister Heigwitz King on the PSVI but this time it's really comprehensive and then they're initiated by the top leader Prime Minister Abe very consistently. And then the secondly this symposium are participated by their leaders in women's field from all over the world 100 people gathered and then as an individual capacity is individual capacity they talk whole day but it's just not a talk they issued the wow to do a proposal a set of 12 proposals that is distributed to you now and then it includes six devoted to women's non-mix and then it's basically directed to Japan the another six points is directed to the world so it's about the suggestion to the world and then that's the second new point I think thirdly it's not only about the great leaders successful ladies gathered in Tokyo and then talk about the difficult issues but also 12 out of 40 foreign participants went to local side of Japan and they days themselves through the individual lectures or like seminars in Fukuoka or Hiroshima or Kurashiki or Tohoku and so in a way by doing so we have a more how do you say that movement is enlarged not only in Tokyo but to the local parts of Japan and in addition we had this plan of are encouraging the individual groups like NGOs or the business group or the students groups to do their own events related to women it can be seminar it can be a cinema event it can be a their musical event many ways that's fine but do that let's do it together with wow and I was not so sure how many it's coming up but in the end we had 120 shine weeks event coming up so I think this wow together with this shine week projects enlarged women movement in Japan enlarge to the local parts and that's I think the another parts another point that is new to wow I mean okay let me stop here and then I really thank for the prime minister Abes initially plus Marama Kie who is really keen on this wow and I think I'm sure she will talk on their about touch upon it so I will stop here and then let me go to I only have five minutes then we go to their major parts the reason why our government is so keen on this women's participate increasement of women's participation in economy is because not about not only for women actually it's not for women I mean my understanding it's not only for women it's for the nation itself it's a national strategy it's not even only economy I would say the problem is the shrinking population as Chad pointed out and also the other that lost 15 years of deflation or huge government did the Japan model is already not working well I mean we have to do something and what we should do I mean the past model is like this the men are going out and then earn money for the whole family while the wives are taking care of kids and they're taking house are keeping and then sometimes take care of the elderly that's the model but it's based on the okay the income is going up and then there are his and the husband's are is you know good enough to support whole family and then he can work for the same company forever lifetime employment and many of this assumption is already collapsed so there there are the we we are there are for example like a normal regular worker compose one third of the whole labor force in Japan and then employment is not secure anymore the salaries increase met and not expected as much or the pension is not so much counting or because of the aging population so there are many many reasons for us to change what we have done in the past to a better model and that's what the key comes into women and then the the thing is there is a very you know promising data by Goldman Sachs or some other index that now that only 66 percent of the college graduate women enter the labor force and then they quit as Chad pointed out 60 percent quit when they have the first child but if those women who wish to work but not being able to work because of many reasons lack of their child care or maybe the husband is not nice enough or whatever the reason coming into the labor market then that actually enhances increases our GDP by 13 percent according to Goldman Sachs at maximum and also some say it's 15 but it's it differs from the some reports anyway it's quite a big increase and then also if this you know untapped labor resources coming to the market it comes actually the same level of Sweden the labor participation and so that's it's something we cannot dismiss presently Japan is not utilizing this untapped resources in quality or quantity and then I have to say Japanese women are very smart I mean I don't have to go back to 11th century but Murasaki Shikibu she was again I like this example very much I really want to say this she is the first female longest novel writer recorded and then her novel is still very popular and then coming into manga or the Eiga cinema and then well but the and then I don't need to go only to Japanese I mean diversity is important and there are many reports that diversity actually gives a better decision-making better products so I mean innovation-wise and also the labor force quantity-wise you have to utilize the women in Japan into the labor we don't force them to work but those women there are many three million women who want to work but because of the environment they are not being able to work so let's the concept is let's make policies or the efforts programs to release and then utilize these potentials to a fully full extent that's the concept okay let me go into the actual policies actually you have better materials in front of you because I distributed the Prime Minister Abe's speech made at the WAO conference 12th the day one and then his speech is really eloquent touching upon the major policies but because it's too much for me to ask you to read at this moment so I'll maybe point out the major parts the our KPIs I mean the big are target is to by 2020 women in leading position to 30% and also the employment rates of women to 73% and then the measures includes incentive to women-friendly companies and the second pillar is supporting women according to life stage which include child I mean the child care services and enhancement or the outsourcing encouraging outsourcing by the babysitter or the other reasonable child services care services and the oh sorry that's the third and then the third is change the work style I mean the long hour super long hour working is the biggest hindrance for the Japanese women to continue to work or being promoted so we change that that's the three major pillar and then the while if you read about to the top number one comes the top leaders commitment is important important and then prime minister himself asked the three business group to appoint at least one female as a board member and actually it takes effect now that one years ago it was only 6.9% of the board member but now it's 7.5% and also the his leadership actually went to employment of women aged 25 to 44 already improved 68% in last 2012 going up to 69.5 to 2013 and also over one year and a half it's the labor force a female labor force has increased by 820,000 so which is quite you know quite a rapid increasement so I think it's the effect is taking place and then the child care services we also made efforts and then the 200,000 children are care center is already in place and the also we have and already the better improvement of child care leave benefits which is almost equal to Sweden which means like 80% of the coverage of the salary is possible if husband and wife takes both takes the child care leave so there are many encouragement or like for the corporate but I will skip because I think Oyama-san will touch upon but government is asking the company to visualize their efforts on their homepage so that the companies who make efforts is actually to be seen by the the public or the procurement also governments give us their better tax incentive to the companies who make efforts those are the things that the government is actually doing and the the I think the it will I think the effect is taking place and the while to do also mentions about the utilizing the outsourcing the house housekeeping you know work to the outside resources and then these things I think we can work on more but I I'm sure that you will see a new Japan not in a few years but I think in in 10 years you will see still traditional but maybe more vibrant Japan and that will be the answer to the I think to the U.S. or the developed countries who which needs to see the new economic growth we cannot repeat the same thing it's not possible but I think the new economic growth answer will be the women for Japan in the case for Japan it's women thank you thank you very much Matsukawa-san and you didn't have time to go through all the the wow outcomes but I really would commend you I think you got the packet and look at the wow to-do list because it really has a very impressive and I think the right list of things that need to be taken on all of them very difficult so we'll see how well they can be implemented but they are the right list and it's it's an impressive collection Oiyama-san Hi, good morning so first of all I'd like to thank to say thank you for this opportunity to attend to this wonderful seminar and I'm very happy to share with you all efforts the Japanese corporations are making toward unleashing the power of women in the workforce so as you know the women's empowerment has been a long-standing issue in Japan but now the Japanese are facing in the turning point so looking back at the last few years the Japanese are the number of the women in Japan who are appointed to the outside directors to the public companies or the start-ups the own business has increased dramatically and then now Japan is reaching reaching up the build the unparalleled memontum in terms of the women's empowerment by Prime Minister and First Lady Abe's strong leadership as Masukasa-san said that now the K-down rent and the business community also seriously considered and and considered and recognized that there has been important to promoting women's empowerment to to for the Japanese business community to succeed in the increasingly the competitiveness global world so though I'll give it to you for example is that currently most of the public companies evaluate women's empowerment to their corporate strategy or point of view from the corporate governance and some unique analysis shows that the company which is profitable or went to a public is as much as struggling to develop women's empowerment more than others so to this April the K-down rent the published the action plan and the women's active participation in the workforce as part of the our plans the Japanese companies are encouraged to clear state their strong commitment to the promoting the diversity which increased of course enhancing the women's participation in the labor force and also to promote the published to concrete action plan based on its own circumstances by doing so the I feel that the company can have a significant impact on their corporate culture or the labor customs from the male dominated society to a diversified society so and to promote this effort the this July the K-down rent also deposited on our website to the the voluntary action plan of the 50 major member companies such as the Toyota or Tolle or Sumitomo and Misubishi and others at outline policies for promotion of the women's manager and board positions so at the same time we have already requested to the old member companies which are the over the 1300 the public companies to draw up and the public comprehensive action plans so our aim is to the release those the plans before the the end of this year so I'd like to point out the three key issues to promote the women's participation so first one is the strong as the Matsukasa said the first one is the strong commitment by the CEOs to promote women's participation so to changing the culture and the customs the such as a long working style and also created more flexible working environment and the second one is that we should take more cool man who who put in effort to not only the own business but also more the support and enjoy their house works and child care support so it's like how to say the like the audience here I expect so and also that the the reason is that society is consists of both men and women and also in Japan we had tons of the seminar or symposium regarding the women's issues but we and most of the audience and the panelists are mainly the women only women so that we should take the cool man to involve the discussion on this issue and the third point is that we need to take make more the choice of opportunity for the boss for the nations so we should not force on old women who must aim to become a president so in fact the there is in in the United States there is a big debate still big debate between the working mother and housewife it's called Mami's War so there's a no answer for which is good or not of course so we should just provide the opportunity and a choice for the nations so and there's still many Chinese ahead however but the do you know that this is not a Japan is not only country for the working on this issue but also the other nation including the U.S. also the struggling this issue such as the glass ceiling problems so we can share the idea and work together and also that that this the issue is to really take time and so the many companies has already announced to women in the leadership positions to are 30 percent by 2020 so I'm very looking forward to our effort to reach this goal and also working together with the the United States as well thank you so much thank thank you so much Oya Masan and I think the key to solving this problem is going to be in the corporate culture and you've touched on that and I think that's really the thing I want to follow up with when we get to that opportunity but thank you very much Robby Thanks very much Matthew and thanks for the invitation today I'd like to start off with a little anecdote that I think gives us a microcosm of what many of the issues are in the Japanese labor market that come together or came together beautifully in one incident a couple weeks ago my wife was about to go off on a business trip from Tokyo to Singapore she was leaving on the 11 o'clock flight from Haneda to Singapore we arrived at the airport at 9 o'clock she wanted some Singapore dollars so we go to the bank branch at at Haneda airport there are four people sitting in the bank branch at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night we are the only customers so that's already a problem okay at the bank branch four people two women at the front in the wind at the bank windows two men in the back sitting at desks okay my wife gives her Yan cash to one of the women at the windows the woman at the window counts it out calculates how many Singapore dollars to get prints that out on a white piece of paper puts the cash in the white piece of paper in a little saucer one of those plastic saucers hands it to one of the guys in the back okay the guy in the back counts it out again looks at the white piece of paper checks the calculation puts his hunk on it puts it all back in the saucer hands it back to her okay she counts it out again gets the cash out of the drawer and gives it to my wife who gets paid more the men or the women okay I don't know the answer to that but I'll bet you it's the men okay do we really need four people in that bank branch and the truly ironic part is then we went up to get the boarding pass my wife puts her passport in the machine and the boarding card comes out automatically okay this is a microcosm of the many issues that face the Japanese labor market it's a big come the bank is a very large company they can't fire the guys in the back of the of the bank branch because it would cost too much it would be too unclear legally whether that's okay or not they're not going to quit because if they quit a big bank and go to some other small firm they would take something like a 75% pay cut relative to what they would get at the other firm so they're not going to quit okay they are entrapped okay and the women at the front for various reasons are also entrapped in this situation so as I go through the economics that I'll talk about now please keep this little microcosm in mind it explains or at least expresses a lot about what's going on okay one of the key goals of obinomics is to have a 2% real growth rate a 2% growth of real GDP think from the supply side you get 2% growth through the growth of the labor force and the growth of productivity how do you raise labor force how do you raise productivity both of these have something to do with with the womenomics okay labor force first youth unemployment Japan has made in men's strides in reducing youth unemployment it's actually not so bad particularly in a global comparison there's not much left to be done there there's some more in education issue but a little bit the elderly okay as you saw on Chad's graph just just now Japanese elderly participation is about the same as it is in the US much higher than in Europe so there might be some we could do the call it late stage middle age people like me should be encouraged to work longer I hope to work until I'm 75 so that's part of it and that's one of the KPIs that I think let's call us unmentioned that'll help some immigration we've made a little bit of progress on that so far particularly I think Prime Minister Abe was very forceful and saying in at least in the economic zones we're going to have household help come in to help women's participation rate but also finally raise participation rates let's talk a couple numbers on participation rates okay 60 years ago the male participation rate that is the ratio of males in the labor force to total men over 15 was about 87 percent in Japan today it's about 70 is this because men have gotten lazy no it's because men have gotten older if you look at the age profile of male participation rates they're about the same as they were 60 years ago much higher by the way in the United States okay so the participation profile hasn't changed very much but men have moved into the older age groups and so the overall participation rate has come down quite significantly okay what about female participation rates in the early 1950s female participation in Japan was about 57 58 percent by 1970 it had fallen to about 45 that was basically a move from farm to factory after the early 1970s it went back up to about 50 and it's been bumping around 50 for the last 30 40 years okay now this is an interesting conundrum if the male participation rate has fallen because men are getting older is the female participation rate flat because women are not getting older no that's not what's happening what's happening is across the curve Chad showed an interesting the M curve there if you look at the shape of that M curve over the last you know 30 40 years it has shifted upward very very substantially for example women in their late 20s the 20 25 to 29 in 1988 the participation rate for the late 20s women was 58 percent now it's 78 percent this has happened across the board so basically higher participation for women has offset the impact of aging so far okay this gets us to a very interesting question of whether that can continue I did a little calculation in a piece I did a while back let me give you some numbers here and if I may put everybody on the spot and ask a couple quick little questions too okay let me see if I can find my page here we are okay let's start with the female labor force participation rate in 2013 and the age profile curve okay if you take the age profile curve of 2013 age participation profile multiply it for each age group by the population in 2020 we pretty much know what the population in 2020 is going to be like okay so take the female population structure of 2020 multiply it by those participation rates today what happens to the total number of women working or in the labor force the answer is it declines by about 1.7 million that's a lot of aging okay so that's if you use today's age wage profile if you used the U.S. age wage profile from today what would happen to the female labor force in Japan who says up who says down ups downs okay the answer is down okay quite substantially okay but instead of falling 1.7 million it only falls 1.2 million so the impact of that increased labor force participation is helpful but it doesn't offset the aging okay furthermore one other major difference between U.S. and Japan and the labor force participation here's the second question of that saving okay of the drop of the labor force okay of about so of the 1.1 million okay how much is accounted for by higher participation of women under age 20 the answer is about half okay so of the the savings about half is accounted by very young women I want those young folks to stay in school they should be studying science they should be studying math they should be studying business accounting whatever I want them to stay in school okay so the fact that Japanese female participation rates are lower than in the United States also reflects the fact that the U.S. is not educating its young people quite as well so let's be a little bit careful on or what we wish for okay so that's the participate participation side there's a lot to be done on participation but it's by no means a panacea for the overall labor force problem next productivity where does womenomics fit into productivity I think there are a number of places first of all if you look at a correlation between what really causes productivity growth and that's got to be the whole thing say Chad's number of 0.5 what it was a decline from the labor force participation say that is offset by better labor force participation in order to hit that 2% growth rate we still need 2% productivity growth right for the last 20 years it's been one what is the best way to raise productivity growth it's R and D okay education helps too it's a little harder to figure it out but I think one of the key things in improving the labor force participation and the contribution that women make is to work on education and women's position in R and D okay keep folks in school get them trained in math and science in particular in addition allocation goes back to my airport example there's a big difference between wages between large and small companies 75 percent so the average compensation for small or medium-sized companies not tiny ones medium-sized companies is about 4 million yen a year the average compensation for large companies is about 7 million yen a year are people who work at large companies that much more productive than people who work at small ones probably not yeah there's more capital to big companies so there's some reason for that but it's not that I doubt it's that much okay so that big small gap has got to be overcome okay that's the two guys working in the back of the back of the bank branch okay there's a lot of differentials by region there's a lot of differentials by duration as well how long you've worked but also of course by gender okay now how do we solve this gender issue along with the others I think we have to re-establish this principle of equal pay for equal work okay we also have to work I think very hard particularly hard on the glass ceiling issues and we've seen some things already begin to happen on that okay these are productivity issues that bank branch of mine that we went to that could probably operate with one person there are a few folks around who still like to change cash but one person is probably enough and so that is an issue of getting the right people in the right place paying them properly what are the policies that I think are necessary to get this done there are two things I would emphasize one is a major expansion of one of the key improvements we've already seen in economics and that's the white collar exemption people complain about how long Japanese stay at the office and this kind of stuff well you know the way the labor laws have worked so so far they encourage people to stay at the office here to four the white collar exemption that is to say the number of people exempt from the overtime rules has been about less than one percent the labor laws say that if you stay more than X hours per week they have to pay you overtime of course the workers know that and so they stick around this is perfectly common everybody knows it's a scam but everybody does it because that's the way the rules work if we could expand the white collar exemption quite significantly maybe to say 20 or 25 percent of the labor force as it is in the U.S. this hours issue would be I think largely solved which would have immense impact on the on the labor force use secondly and this is under discussion now we'll see what happens is something called monetary compensation for dismissal okay let me give you an example if Morgan Stanley fires me today and I think that's unfair I can go to court and I can say what that was unfair and blah blah reinstate me okay or whatever it'll take a couple years for that to wind itself wind its way through court if the court rules in my favor Morgan Stanley would have no legal recourse other than to rehire me and pay me back wages okay which means they're going to be very reluctant to hire full-time workers because what a business conditions change okay so if we can have monetary compensation for dismissal okay that's going to make it much more flexible for firms to hire and fire as needs arise okay it'll also give important incentives to workers to raise their skill levels the two guys at the back of that bank branch they're sitting there entrapped because the bank is not empowered to give them a couple years wages and say goodbye and because the bank is not empowered to do that they are not acquiring the skills they need to go on to the next stage of their careers and by the way they're limiting the opportunities for advancement for the two women sitting in the front of that bank branch too so I think one of the key things in pushing forward or let me put these two things key things in pushing forward the womenomics agenda is to get the work on this white collar exemption make it bigger and to actually implement this monetary compensation for dismissal let me end with a couple other things some of these policies are going to cost money where's that money going to come from well Japan today spends about was it 15 trillion on R&D public and private put together public is about five trillion okay Japan spends about five trillion on defense Japan also spends 125 trillion yen every year on social welfare programs 60 trillion for pensions plus 40 trillion on medical 10 plus trillion each on nursing and family support okay how are we going to raise education levels improve labor markets get some of these issues with the the healthcare support for the elderly or for women get them household helpers how are we going to get those issues addressed if we're spending that much money on these social welfare we need to raise the retirement age so keep people in the labor force that'll help even on the expenditure side we need to eliminate waste in the medical system a friend of mine a pharmacologist I asked him okay if you had to give me a number on how much we could cut out of that 40 trillion on medical spending without sacrificing quality what percentage would that be he said a third we could take 15 plus trillion out of the medical budget every year without sacrificing quality if we could just make it work more efficiently and that's not hard to do a third of the medical care is now spent on terminal terminal care for the elderly I get very angry about this due to experiences in my family my view is that the way we're running our medical systems now is deeply immoral because we are unnecessarily and in a certain sense in a torturing way extending life unnecessarily Japanese public opinion polls say a very queer very queer preference not to have life extension medical policies or medical care we have to cut that out stop torturing old people and use the money for socially beneficial purposes like educating kids use things for to support women in their work in the labor force so we got to find the money self somewhere I'm very much in favor of this education I've been working actually with Kathy Matsui as well on this UAW as I think Madam Abe is also working this is something that's very very near and dear to my heart because the more we push education and opportunity for women the better the society is going to be overall there's an institution that we've all been involved with called the Asian University for Women my involvement was actually triggered inspired by a woman from Washington years ago she's passed away now but a woman named Eleanor Hadley who was an economist in the occupation period and was very instrumental in rebuilding the Japanese economy and preventing some of the more shall we say anti redevelopment new dealers from basically destroying things she was very very influential and for that reason for dealing with Eleanor over the years he was a wonderful wonderful and very forceful person those are the reason that was the reason I got involved with AUW and I think if we push that agenda more the science technology agenda the education agenda using money that we're currently wasting in the social security systems then we can push the womenomics agenda even more strongly so let me end my short little tirade there and we'll go on thank you thank you Robbie as always really insightful and and and comprehensive and I think particularly you've you've focused the conversation on a few of the the key policy areas that I think are really important here and and some of those in fact I think the first ones you mentioned the the ones about the white collar exemption and the monetary compensation for dismissal are things that are get to the broader question of of flexibility of the labor force and and don't just apply to women but they are preconditions are dealing with issues like that through concrete policies actually can make a difference to the overall labor conditions that would would improve conditions for women as well so I'm glad you introduced and emphasize those those points okay I was going to ask a couple of questions of the panelists but because we're running a little behind I'm gonna forego that right and and move straight to questions so if you have a question for any or all of the panelists please raise your hand there are microphones coming around please identify yourself and and ask a short question if you can there's a lady in the back there yeah Hi Nina Easton with Fortune magazine can all of you whoever wants to address the question of culture the desire among women to stay home and the and the culture that men have bought into too it seems like you know I was in lived in Japan in 1993 writing about this and what you wrote Matthew in your newsletter today it's exactly the same it seems like it doesn't seem like a lot changed so just two questions one how much of a role does culture play and how much has it changed okay I don't know whether you know Oyamasan and Matsukawa-san more because you're Japanese than because you're women I'd be interested in your your answer to that question Then thank you for the question and actually I think the culture has changed a quite a lot especially for the younger generations and maybe Oyamasan may have a different view but I think the if also the daughter shows the tendency is the younger generation has more acceptance for the men and women sharing the housekeeping or the raising case so like my husband who is in their 40s late they don't change he when I asked to watch dishes he just watched the dishes meaning he skipped the cup or skipped the spoon or fork I think it was his petite resistance but well he doesn't change I get really good crap but younger generations they are more naturally engaging in the sharing work and for the household and raising his both so I think it's already changing I don't worry that's part too much but on the other hand there are because of the I think financial difficulties some younger women hope to be a housewife because it's a lucky strike I mean you cannot be a housewife and being happy unless you catch is a rich promising husband which is much more difficult than having a great job so I think that's one and then just for because it's related the robot's points on I need to just supplement one two things very quickly actually primary I mean our government is actually working on the white collar exemptions enlargement and their government and the labor and the business their CEO parts three three three parts dialogue is actually ongoing so we are taking that issue already under I mean as an issue and then working on the other thing is retirement age our government is trying to upgrade it to 70 years old and then the for the long hour super long hour low productivity work so is the biggest problem and then the our program also includes the the flexible work style of like introducing telework or their their ICTs more in and then also the flex time and all this flexibility of the work style is the biggest pillar I quit up I was a little bit nervous and I quit the point because too too much concentrating on the time but I just wanted to mention that that is very important point and our program is actually tackling on that thank you thanks do you want to say anything so I totally agree with the the idea with the Matsukawa-san the idea so and the my understanding is also that the younger generation the under the maybe 40 so the generation is much more dramatically change to the to share the house work between the men the women so and the the younger the man is very respect to women to the outside to work so and that's why their support the very much so and also that's the corporate side the many Japanese companies has already tried to make the nursery own nursery equipment and also the child care support systems and policies at the same time but I we need to implement or make a policy is that element of the tax system including tax deductions and the exemption for the supports as supports and the aspect of the national pension scheme were designed by the very traditional family model that were the based on a gender role stereotype so as you point out now the social and economic environment has been changed so we need to adapt to the eliminate agenda role stereotypes okay thank you Yamazan and thanks for introducing the tax issues which are another thing on the wow to-do list and important points you know the marriage penalty the the tax you know the idea of introducing better tax deductions for child rearing tax incentives for companies and encourage men to take parental leave so there are a bunch of taxes she's Robin did you want to comment on that or yeah if I may one thing is that culture is endogenous when you change the economic incentives the culture has changed too there was a study by a Nehon University professor a few years ago and he asked a raft of women this is on a you know standard a sample big sample from the ministry welfare do you want to get married and have kids and then he tried to regress the answers the yes no answers to that on a bunch of other questions that he asked okay 40 some other questions there were only two that were statistically significant one was age and the other one was the yes no answer to a question when you were a teenager did your father help with the housework and if the answer was yes then the women wanted to get married and have kids and the answer was no then they didn't okay so as culture changes we're going to see some changes there if I may add one other policy change I think is necessary you mentioned the three party dialogue right now my view is that the three party dialogue between labor business and government is actually a dialogue between big labor big business and big government and it's baloney it's not going to have any impact on labor market change okay because basically what you've got around the table is a whole bunch of guys who are the vested interests the guys at that table are the guys sitting in the back of that bank branch okay and they are not going to give up what they want unless we get other people at the table so my proposal is to abolish the rhodo sesak shingikai that is the labor policy affairs commission at the ministry of health and welfare okay and substitute for that commission a group that is more representative of the labor market today there are 30 people on the committee the 10 of them are academics from Tokyo some of whom have shall we say a only a modest grasp of what's really going on 10 of them are labor union officials labor unions represent 18 percent of the labor force now okay and the other 10 are big business representatives this is not a labor policy council that's going to give us the kind of changes we need so my advice to Mr. Shiozaki if he were to ask me which he hasn't but my advice would be fire the whole commission fire them all and replace them monetary compensation without okay maybe give them a few bucks whatever and replace them with a group that better represents the labor market as it is now that's my third policy recommendation hi my name is David Walker I'm with the Marine Corps in Kayakal out of Quantico I'm curious about the about the women who do not get married what their outcomes look like in the labor market compared with the women who do since they don't have some of the same pressing issues of women who do get married and then have children any statistically significant answer to that you want elaboration you mean you're asking about the workforce participation rates of unmarried women and how I don't think we have a statistical answer that question but maybe Mats Kawasan has a an impression on this I don't have a statistic daughter so this is just my impression I may be wrong but my sense is there are two different groups of the women who are unmarried there are unmarried women they are into the you know the career paths and the aiming at the promotion and then so very you know high participation in the the market and then also the leadership position pursuing the other part the other type of the group of the women who are actually taking unregular work so they are not earning big money I mean actually not paid and then they don't they are seeking for their good marriage but not necessarily and then they are often not very much highly educated so these kind of the typical type of women they are participating labor market or sometimes just stay at house with their parents and then so you know you cannot just say I'm married women is disciple that that I have I have I I know very different two types the same way goes to the the regular employment women's group you see I have two kids I'm working crazy and I I'm committed after this UN General Assembly season I will do as wow's commitment says unprecedented drastic to change your work style to be to come home at 6 15 but having said that that I have a regular work two kids and then I'm working full time and you know and then the other type is well you actually are working but just to supplement that your priority is kids and then not necessarily you know work maybe sometimes short hour like are so it's it's you cannot just say by my so my answer to you is there may be some statistical tendency but you cannot just make a statistic by two very different groups only by the number my sense is there are two very different groups in both unmarried women and married women thank you okay Robbie quickly and then we're going to let one more question back there thanks I don't have data on this but I can give you the example of my wife's cousin Satsuki okay she was hired as an e-punchoku sort of general a person at a a large life company about 15 years ago she's worked the whole time she's happy in her you know current single job she's a single woman happy in the job wants to keep doing this not particularly interested in you know looking out for her husband then her company came along and said gee you know we're kind of short on professional track folks so would you consider shifting from general track to professional track okay now that requires a certain number she's never thought of doing that and for these 15 years in the firm she never had any incentives to acquire skills necessary to be on the professional track and now all of a sudden they're asking her to switch okay so it'll be very interesting well she she agreed to do it we'll see if they transfer her to New York or something like that but now she's got a completely different set of responsibilities so you might call that a reward for having stuck with it we'll have to have to see I wish I had some statistics on it but it's very interesting beyond that anecdote do you have an impression that that sort of thing is happening more yes very clearly happened there's a labor shortage go to any labor intensive company in Tokyo the big companies the listed companies they still have access labor like our friends in the bank the small companies don't they need all the talent they can get and if you look at the quantity of employment and the wages the women are getting quantity and wages have been rising for the last 20 years for men quantity and wages have been falling there is a convergence the ratio of male of female to male wages per hour is now about 66 percent 15 20 years ago it was about in the mid 50s so that convergence is occurring and you know people like my cousin my wife's cousin are examples of how that's happening okay thanks Abigail thank you Abigail Friedman of the Asia Foundation this has been fascinating both sets of panels this last panel in particular what I find most interesting is that you have linked the conversation to Prime Minister Abe's third arrow and let's see if I can phrase this correctly but there are two strong interests in addressing the gender inequality issues in Japan one is because it's the right thing to do and then the other is for economic reasons I have been to various CSIS organized panels as well on the issue of the three arrows and when they get to the structural reform one they're the jury is still out my guess is that in Japan if you ask if you took a poll and ask people how they feel about women in the workforce you're going to get much higher support for that than if you ask people about structural reform so my question is how do we save the the issue of gender equality and advancing the role of women in Japanese society in the face of controversy ambivalence over structural reform and the there are people who feel that structural reform in fact is not essential to address Japanese economic issues so if you can turn that into a question that can help me understand the nexus between the third arrow and women's empowerment in Japan I would appreciate it thank you I guess there are two parts that I hear in there one is what is the actual impact of liminomics in the third arrow debate and does it weigh very heavily relative to some of the other structural forms you didn't exactly ask that but that's what I'm asking and then the other is is you know it's hard so is it harder or less hard than other structural forms is it more or less likely to actually be done once the conferences are finished and the speeches have been given you know are people actually going to follow through on some of this difficult work I don't know if anybody Robby My view is that the third arrow is a lot more popular than the Japanese media would have you think because remember the Japanese media are part of the old structure so they don't like a lot of this stuff because what if for example there was a proposal to abolish the newspaper law the shimbun hole you can bet dollars to donuts that the Nikkei and the Omiuri will oppose that because that's how they maintain that's how they maintain their control over the media so the fact that some sources like that are against elements in the third arrow doesn't convince me that the country is against it what's my evidence the evidence comes from when prime minister Abed decided to enter the TPP negotiations there was a lot of controversy about whether he should do that before the election last year he said we're going in and his support rate went up many years ago prime minister Koizumi called the election on postal savings a reform big structural reform he won by a landslide so my sense is the folks who are against the structural reforms are loud but they're small another thing in agriculture the prime minister just announced a few weeks ago that there would be a major change in the laws on the Japan agricultural association okay yeah everybody knows we got to do that there's not nearly as much opposition as some of the louder louder folks would say the key to me in getting that done is this diet reform the lower house diet reform but we don't have time to go into that today so in fact unfortunately because I want to hear other answers I think we're going to have to take some of that offline and maybe Abigail you can talk to some of the other panelists afterwards because an interesting question we are over time unfortunately so I am going to have to end this panel now but please join me in thanking the panelists for excellent presentation thank you we now have nine minutes and 45 seconds to eat lunch it's it's up on the Samnon terrace behind us please get your lunch you can bring it back in here and as you come back in there are headsets and interpreting