 Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to CSIS. My name is Matthew Goodman. I hold the Simon chair in political economy here at CSIS, and delighted to see a nice crowd here this morning. I also want to acknowledge and welcome our online viewers. We have many loyal followers online, and those of you online can follow us on Twitter, at CSIS, hashtag CSIS Live. Those in the room can do that too if you must, but please do it silently, set your smartphones or whatever on stun. I want to thank the Embassy of Japan and our partners at the Asia Foundation for helping us put this event together and making it possible. So when you study economics, you learn a number of immutable laws and theorems like the law of diminishing marginal returns and the law of theory of comparative advantage and so on. You also learn how to calculate national income or gross domestic product. There are lots of ways to do that, but one simple formula is that GDP equals the number of people times the amount each person can do, can work, can produce. And that's essentially what you've got to work with when you're running an economy. And herein lies the fundamental challenge and the opportunity that we're here to discuss today. For advanced countries like Japan and the United States, there is a dual challenge of aging populations and difficulty squeezing more productivity out of the existing workforce. In Japan's case, the population is not only aging rapidly, but shrinking. The population peaked in absolute terms in about 2010 and has been declining ever since. As we'll hear a bit later, the Japanese workforce is on track to shrink by some 30 million, 30 million people over the first half of this century from about 85 million to 55 million, which is pretty challenging. But Japan is compounding this problem by not using half of its existing population productively. Japanese women work far less than their male counterparts and then women in other countries. They drop out of the workforce earlier and they rarely rise to leadership roles. So here's the opportunity. Get more women into the workforce, give them more meaningful roles, and you could give a boost to both sides of that equation, number of people working and the output per worker. This could bend the arc of Japan's long-term growth trajectory in a more favorable direction. To his credit, Prime Minister Abe has clearly recognized this challenge and the opportunity and has put womenomics, so-called womenomics, at the center of his reform program. We're gonna take a look at that program today and how it may be even improved upon. Incidentally, the term womenomics was coined about 15 years ago by a classmate of Mike Greens and mine at CICE, Kathy Matsui, who's been doing some great work on this subject at Goldman Sachs. Kathy really wanted to be here today, but unfortunately she's on another continent somewhere, so couldn't join us. Meanwhile, many developing countries have the advantages of growing populations and tremendous opportunities for gains in productivity, yet women in these countries face legal, educational, health, and other challenges that not only diminish their lives, but make them less than productive economic actors. The United States and Japan have made women's empowerment in third countries a central pillar of the bilateral dialogue that they started earlier this year. So we're gonna look at that issue as well as the underlying issues in Japan. We've got two outstanding panels of experts and we have two very special keynote speakers, one of whom I'm about to introduce, but let me first say that womenomics is actually quite a challenging topic to take on. There are a lot of, this topic is subject to a lot of tokenism, to a lot of stereotyping. It's actually the reasons for the lack of women's empowerment, economic empowerment are complex and it's quite difficult to unbundle the demographic factors, the legal and policy factors, and cultural factors of course. And of course solutions are very hard and won't come easily. But we hope to try to get beneath the surface here and to look at some of the real reasons that women don't participate economically as much as they could and should in Japan and in the developing world and to try to look at some of the practical solutions for Japan and for the developing world. So that's what we're gonna be doing today from now until about one o'clock. And appreciate your being here and your patience in staying throughout. So with that, let me start the program by welcoming back to CSAS, our old friend Wendy Cutler. Wendy I'm sure is known to every person in this room as the Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. She has been at USTR for longer than she wants to remember, working on Japan, Korea, APEC, many other issues. She is currently overseeing and responsible for the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations which the U.S. and Japan of course are members of. And we're just delighted to have Wendy up here today, give a few remarks on womenomics and I hope take a few questions. So Wendy please. Well thank you very much Matt and it's a pleasure to be back here at CSIS. This conference comes on the heels of the World Assembly for Women Meeting in Tokyo which took place a couple of weeks ago. I was in Tokyo around that time and there seemed to be a lot of excitement about the conference which involved not only the prime minister but his wife who I understand will be speaking here later today. This conference you've put together today I think we'll really get at some of the hardcore issues that are being faced by women in Japan but also in the United States as well. And I believe that talking about how the U.S. and Japan can cooperate with respect to women's economic impairment issues in third countries and discussing why women's participation in the Japanese workforce is so critical are really two very important topics. Let me start and just say women's full and equitable participation in the workforce is an issue that's important to the United States and Japan. And while the U.S. has made a lot of progress in this area and perhaps more progress than Japan it's a work in progress. And empowering women and getting women to be key participants in the workforce is really critical to both of our economies and to creating prosperous societies where opportunity is available to all. Ambassador Kennedy who has become very active on the front of Womenomics I think has summed up this issue very well by saying that this is not just a woman's issue it's a man's issue it's a family issue it's an economic and security issue and a moral issue. Japan is both a driver of global economic growth and a partner of the United States in promoting economic progress in the Asia Pacific region and our economies are closely linked and the United States is deeply vested in Japan's success and future prosperity. That's one of the reasons why we're working so hard to conclude the TPP negotiations with Japan and it's one reason why we also want to see womenomics succeed in Japan. On the TPP front this is an important week with Ambassador Froman and Minister Murray scheduled to meet starting this afternoon. We are looking forward to productive discussions as the ministers review progress in the negotiations identify where gaps exist in the talks and work through the outstanding issues all with the goal of concluding these important negotiations as soon as possible. There is an emerging consensus that TPP is an essential ingredient into Abe's third arrow but I'm not here to talk about TPP today so that's all I'm gonna say. So closer to the topic at hand empowering women is also a very important part of Abe's third arrow and it's all in the quest for creating a stronger, more vibrant and growing Japanese economy. And in many ways Japanese women really hold the key in a country that faces enormous demographic challenges well known to all of you in the room and as one of the leading scholars in this area Cathy Matsui said that by really integrating women into the Japanese workforce Japan's GDP could grow by almost 13% and even if the gap were enclosed but female employment was raised to the level of other G7 economies GDP in Japan could increase by 4% according to the IMF. I understand that the prime minister has set a target of having women occupy 30% of leading positions in the Japanese government and business by 2020. I was told in the early 90s that Japan doesn't agree to targets that's what they told us in all the trade negotiations but this seems to be a valuable target. And in that quest in his cabinet reshuffle earlier this month Prime Minister Abe has appointed five female ministers and he has also appointed a woman to head the LDP's policy research council. And he's also announced a number of steps aimed at removing the obstacles to participation by women in the workforce which I'll touch upon shortly. But before I comment on the challenges and measures to address them I just wanna touch briefly about what we're doing in the United States. As I noted the US has its own challenges as well when it comes to gender equality in the workplace and just last week the Census Bureau reported that the gender wage gap between men and women while narrowing slightly last year has not improved much since 2007. This summer the president hosted a summit on working families to propel a national conversation about how we can update the American workplaces to ensure the US economic competitiveness and promote equity in our workforce. President Obama announced a package of public and private sector efforts that include steps to protect pregnant working women, to expand apprenticeships for women, to target resources to help more women enter high paying fields and to make childcare more affordable. He also ordered every federal agency to expand access to flexible work schedules and give employees the right to request them. The president has repeatedly underscored his belief that providing opportunities for working women and families is the right thing to do for our economy because when women succeed America succeeds. And indeed women have made great strides in the American society. They have made important inroads into leadership positions in the US government. About a quarter of the president's cabinet are women and many of his top advisors in the White House are also women. My own agency USTR is making strides too since I joined USTR in 1988. I've worked for three female US trade representatives and at present close to half of the senior staff of USTR are female. More broadly in the federal government senior economic service about one third of those appointees are women. So the representation of senior women in senior management jobs within the US government has been growing but once again our work is not complete. Now just taking this down a notch if I can make a few observations being a female trade diplomat and looking back in my 20 odd years of negotiating with the Japanese I have seen dramatic changes that have led to increased diversity in the workplace and increased opportunities for both women and minorities. From the early, from the late 1980s when I was a junior negotiator to my current position I have seen firsthand the unique collection of skills that women bring to the negotiating table and some of you may disagree but in my view women are good listeners, good problem solvers, good at putting themselves in the other side shoes and also good at working through the divergent positions within their governments to develop a consensus view. And I think all four of these attributes are really key to being an effective and successful trade negotiator. At the same time women also face unique challenges at the negotiating table. One, I think they are tested very hard by their male counterparts and as a result there's a need for female negotiators to really be on top of their game and to be able to prove themselves both with respect to substance but also with respect to remaining firm at the negotiating table. Another challenge facing women at the negotiating table and this is one which I have faced many times with the Japanese through the years is that through the years a number of my counterparts have been very uncomfortable facing a woman across the negotiating table. And the obvious way to kind of sense that is when you're sitting across the table and they don't look at you but they look at the guy sitting next to you. And the list goes on and on. In my field also you can't help but notice how few women are part of the negotiating, the Japanese negotiating teams, particularly at senior levels. At junior levels I do see that changing now and that's very encouraging. Many, a number of the recent, a point, the recent, excuse me, the recent shuffles in the bureaucracy over the summer have promoted some of my close colleagues in Japan to more senior positions. And I think over time as more women are at the junior ranks you'll see more women getting to the senior ranks. I have enormous respect for the women who have made it to the senior management positions in Japan and I really can't imagine the obstacles that they have had to face to get there including at times probably very little support from their male colleagues. So now let me just change to the topic more at hand more generally. What are the changes that are needed to allow more women in Japan not only to enter the workforce but to remain in the workforce and to reenter the workforce perhaps after they've had families? First I think it's important that policies are implemented, legislation is passed on a top down basis. The prime minister has made womanomics a major part of his domestic reform agenda and in his growth strategy he has pledged to expand funding for daycare facilities. He's also proposed legislation to address tax and pension rules seen as penalizing work in women and as well as legislation that would advance his goals of increasing the percentage of women in public and private sector leadership positions. And all of this is welcome and so needed in Japan but as the prime minister himself has said there's still a long way to go and we all know too well that top down policies alone can't make women's empowerment a success. The solution is simply more complex than this. So I'd like just to offer a few thoughts and other steps Japan should take or should consider taking if it is indeed serious about women's empowerment. First and probably the most difficult issue to get your hands around is developing new attitudes in the workplace. New attitudes need to be cultivated over time they can't be mandated and the prime minister himself has observed Japan's corporate culture is still one of pinstripes and button downs and he's called on corporate Japan to follow his lead in bringing more women into the leadership ranks. Executives and working level people must come to terms with their own biases that shape their thinking and decision making and really develop a mindset that embraces equality and is open to change recognizing the role that women can play. This is no easy feat and something that can happen overnight. Second, I think that Japan needs to look at establishing more flexible work policies and this is in addition to more daycare and aftercare facilities but those are important elements and all of these more flexible work policies including for example telecommuting would all be with the objective of achieving a better work-life balance and for many women in the room we've all strived with trying to achieve that balance between work and family and as someone who's tried to achieve that for many, many years I've finally come to terms with the fact that I will never achieve that balance and that takes a huge burden off me but I do try every day to be a better mother and a better employee but on certain days my family will tell me I didn't do a good job and other days my boss and my colleagues will tell me I failed as well. Flexible work policies may help Japanese women choose to remain in their jobs or importantly to re-enter the workforce after childbirth. Three, I think it's really important and something that's helped me in my career is the whole issue of having role models and mentors. Mentoring by women leaders is an important step to help advance women in the government and the private sector and I think this is a particular challenge for Japan where there are fewer women at that level but I think it really calls upon the women who have succeeded professionally in Japan to really give back and to help provide important career advice and important advice how to cope in the workplace to younger women entering the workforce and I also think this provides a huge and important opportunity for US women and Japanese women to work together on these issues and for US women to be mentors to younger Japanese women and finally I'm just going to end with my last observation which I call the go-home observation and that is that Japanese bureaucrats, private sector folks work way too long hours and I'm not exactly sure what they're doing in the office but they're always there. It's not uncommon where I can call my counterpart around midnight my time from, we can call around 11 a.m. here which is midnight in Japan and not only are the guys I'm working with are still in the office but their whole teams are still there ready to work more and I think that this whole what Japan has gotten itself into in these really, really long hours and not going home earlier I question whether that really leads to increased productivity and I also think it really detracts from really getting at this issue. I think shorter working hours would allow for fathers to spend more time with their families and would help put women who could not work such long hours at a more competitive level playing field with their male colleagues. In conclusion I am hopeful that this increasing focus on women in Japan is not just the latest fad but indeed something that will continue for the foreseeable future and I would just also like to say that it's important to keep in mind particularly for the men in the audience that women's empowerment is not at the expense of men. In the trade world we like to say we conclude negotiations that are win-win everyone comes out better and here I would say that increasing the participation of women in the workforce and empowering them provides enormous benefits for our respective economies, our respective societies, our families and our workplaces. I'm sure the issues I've raised this morning will be discussed in more detail throughout the morning unfortunately I won't be able to stay here as we prepare for today's TPP meetings but I really look forward to watching this later on the webcast. I think this is a really important issue and I think the fact that CSIS has put this conference together in Washington on this issue and with the turnout today just underscores how important this issue is and not just for Japan, not just for the US but it's an issue where the US and Japan can work together to advance. Thank you very much. Thank you Wendy that was really terrific introduction and I think you've touched a lot of the key themes as you were enumerating the leadership positions for women at USTR I was thinking that actually all of the senior Asia hands at USTR are women if I'm not mistaken for Japan, for Korea, for China, for Southeast Asia and in the Asia field I think we suffer because we don't have overall as many women in senior positions so it's terrific that there's such a great core of which you are the kind of the leader of the pack as it were. But some of the other countries think it's a, we do this on purpose and drive them crazy. The drive, the Asians crazy. That's terrific. Wendy's willing to take a couple of questions on this and not on TPP if you have questions on her comments or on these issues more generally. If you do please raise your hand and there will be a microphone. You covered so much ground that I'm sure, okay we'll let Mike go over here. Mike to Mike, Mike to Mike, thanks. So I won't ask about TPP but can I ask about APEC? If you think about areas where the US and Japan and other like-minded states work on this, APEC seems like one logical candidate. Is there much going on on womenomics or women's empowerment, economic empowerment in APEC or do you see the prospect of cooperation in that area? Yeah and we've had a long standing agenda in APEC on women's empowerment and women's issues. In Honolulu, in our host year, there was some high level conferences on this issue. Those have continued and I believe even in China this year there was recently an event on this. But I think this is an area that is already front and center on the APEC agenda. And I think given the increased attention on this issue in Japan and with the US it's an issue we can really cooperate on going forward in APEC and try and see how we can advance our work in this area. Okay, I saw a gentleman there who had a question. Can you just identify yourself? Hi, Doug Palmer with Politico. And this, I mean you sort of touched on this in your comments but it goes to a point that Mr. Goodman was making about Japan's declining workforce and I guess shrinking economy. I mean, do you think it's important for Japan's long term economic growth and its attractiveness as a market for US exports that there be more women in the workforce? Is that gonna make it a bigger market long term? Absolutely, I mean I think that, looking at the demographics in Japan there gonna be fewer and fewer men to do the jobs, to own the companies, to be the innovators, to be the entrepreneurs. And so logically women have an important role to play here and as women get into those jobs and they own more businesses, they import more, they export more and they become just more an integral part of the Japanese economy, they'll just become a more important force in the trading environment. I know you really wanted to ask a TPP question. I'm not going to ask, I'm not going to ask. I'm Emma Chandler-Avery at CRS. I believe that part of Kathy Matsui's argument is that you can increase women's participation in the workforce but also simultaneously raise the fertility rate and obviously that's part of Japan's demographic problem. Do you think, do you buy that? And do you think that the policies that are in place in Japan make that possible? Okay, I'm gonna let one of the panelists later today to really comment on that. I have read the literature which does suggest that being in the workforce has a positive correlation with increased fertility rates but I'm really not the expert here. Okay, I should say that Emma's done some great work on this topic for CRS and I commend it to you. Any other questions? We are one more over there and then we'll wind it up and let Wendy get back to finishing TPP please. Thanks a lot. You mentioned changing workforce attitudes and given your long experience at USDR, can you name some tangible measures that can be taken? One for instance I've conceived of is if you work in an organization where senior managers really sort of practice what they preach, they prioritize work quality over work hours, then that sort of sets the tone for the organization. What specific measures do you think can be taken? And I think that's an important question because in the workplace a lot of people take their cues from their bosses. And so one thing I've always done is made sure I don't stay in the office till midnight. I try and go home for USDR at a reasonable hour. Now I'm on my blackberry from the minute I leave and sometimes my son asks me, why are you home? You're on your blackberry so much, you might as well be at work but putting that aside, I think it's important for bosses to kind of set the tone, set the kind of the arrangements for the office because others do follow. And I'd like to say that through my career I've really tried to reach out to the younger women at USDR particularly there's a juncture in women's careers where they start having children and then they start debating is USDR really the place that I can, can I stay here given the work demands, given the travel demands and that's a personal decision. I'm someone who chose to stay there. I've been there for 26 years. I do have a son who's actually 15 today and I can share those experiences and I can share my negotiating experiences as well. So I really try and give back here. Before I leave just one issue I just wanna put on the table and I don't know if you're gonna get out today but something I've already begun hearing from some of my, I don't wanna say Japanese friends but I've heard these comments in Japan and that is as women begin assuming more cabinet positions or women begin getting more senior level positions in the Japanese bureaucracy there is gonna be an issue in the workforce we've seen this in the United States and that is one where men could feel that these are jobs they should have gotten had they been a woman they would have gotten the jobs and then even women feeling well did I get that job because I'm a woman or did I get that job because of merit because I've worked so hard for this job and I wanna know that I got it because I was a person and not a woman and that's an issue we've all grappled with in the workplace as women as men in the United States and I think that's an issue as I say I've started hearing about that in Japan so I think it's an interesting issue as I know there are many scholars and academics here and people who are really interested in the subject and I think it's something that really is another issue between closer cooperation and dialogue between US and Japanese women and men we can share our experiences and try and work through this important issue. Thank you very much. Thank you Wendy, that's really terrific. And note to Simon's share team I'll be leaving at 4.30 today. Seriously, if we could invite panel one up and we will get started, thanks. Hello, I'm Amy Stutter, a lot of you won't know me because I'm actually new here. I started at CSIS and moved to Washington about three months ago. I'm the new deputy director of the Simon-Tarrant Political Economy. So thank you Matt for the job and for the introduction to this session and thank you also to Wendy who really gave us the most fantastic way of coming into this session. I made a note of the very final thing that she said as she was speaking. She said, this is not just an opportunity for the US or for Japan but for the US and Japan to work together and that's really what this panel is about. Before we kick off into the presentations I just want to say why this issue is so important. It's really difficult to overstate the importance. There are 865 million women in the world that are either unemployed or underemployed. 94% of those women live in developing countries. Maybe a 3% of the remaining six live in Japan. Women are at far greater risk of poverty than men and because women play a larger role in child rearing when they do fall into poverty it ends up turning into a vicious cycle that can go on for generations and generations. There's also a huge opportunity here that potential gains to the global economy of female economic empowerment are enormous. I read an estimate somewhere that full employment of women could lead to a 34% boost to global GDP. That to me seems very optimistic but I hope it's true but even the lowest estimate is 5% which in and of itself is a worthwhile goal. We really couldn't have a more qualified group of people here to speak. Dr. Tanaka to my right, she's the senior gender advisor at JICA. She's been working on female economic empowerment in developing countries since 1981. So bearing in mind that Prime Minister Abe married his wife in 1987, that's long before he became interested in women because of economic issues. Cathy Cozzarelli unfortunately couldn't be here with us today but Amanda van Dool is very kindly stepped in at the very last minute and again she's an absolutely fantastic person to be here because she actually helped to set up the US-Japan Development Cooperation collaboration that's just started. And then Eileen Pennington who helped us put this whole thing together. So first of all thank you for that but who's also been working on these issues for 16 years. So it's really a fantastic group and I hope we're gonna be able to get into some of the meat of the issues. And now with that I'll hand over to Dr. Tanaka to talk about JICA's efforts. Good morning everyone and thank you very much for our warm introduction Amy. I'm Yumiko Tanaka, I'm a senior advisor on gender and development working for JICA. And I am so grateful for the opportunity to speak to such a wonderful group of professionals today. I started in JICA's Women and Development Program in 1990s and before that I used to work for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asian and Pacific for about 10 years. So most of my experiences on gender and development programs are based in Asian and Pacific. But since I joined JICA I expanded my activities to Africa, Latin America and some Middle Asia, sorry, Eastern and Middle Asian countries. And this morning I'd like to tell you about our efforts for gender and development program under Japanese ODA and explore the opportunities for US-Japan cooperation for women's economic empowerment in the developing countries. And my time is limited to about 10 to 15 minutes. So I will try my best to share our overview of our program and latest development of our programs. So this is the outline of my presentation for today. Although I put JICA, Visions and Missions since time is limited so I will not speak about that part very much. So I will focus on the JICA's strategies and actions for gender equality and women's empowerment and US-Japan cooperation for gender equality and women's empowerment challenges and opportunities. So this is JICA's Visions and Missions. As you know the JICA has been promoting the inclusive and dynamic development including the global agenda, poverty, governance and human security issues. And our schemes are divided into three parts. One is technical cooperation and the grant aid. And after we merged with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, we have been extending the bilateral loan aid. And our regional distribution has been mostly focused on Asia but since Madam Ogata has joined us, we shifted our focus to the African countries. For the sector-wide, we are still very much focused on the infrastructure and hardware development but for the technical cooperation or technical assistance, we've been supporting, we've been providing aid in agriculture, human resources which means education and health and some other areas as well. So regarding the strategies and actions for gender equality and women's empowerment, we consider it's a key for achieving equitable, inclusive, dynamic and sustainable development and it is a fundamental human rights and it is a stand-alone goal for development yet at the same time it's crucial drivers of economic and social change and development as a cross-cutting issue. And focusing on gender equality and women's empowerment for JICA is very important from an operational viewpoints. First, promoting gender equality, bring out the paradigm shift from output to outcome. Since we've been focusing too much on the output so far but bringing into the gender perspectives, we can be more result-oriented development cooperation. And the second, promoting the gender equality can generate better results in achieving the long-term goals and project objectives. Although women's, promoting the women's empowerment and gender equality could be instrumental or the tool to achieve the project goals, yet we got lots of evidence that if we focus on these issues we can get the better results. And addressing enable environment for women as a key for enhancing women's capabilities for better and wider choices for life. And women's empowerment is a key for natural disaster risk management, peace building and good governance. We learned it from our own experiences through the earthquake in Hanshin Awaji in 1994 and also the East Japan earthquake we experienced in 2011. And the women's participation in disaster risk management is a key. And I will show some examples later. And we also get the mandates from the national and global commitment. Like we have a Japan ODA Charter and Japan Gender and Development Initiatives. And we have the third basic plan for the gender equality. And we draw mandates from the global commitment like Beijing platform of action and CDAO and OECD duck guiding principles on gender equality and UN Security Council resolution 1325 under which we are now making a national plan of action. And also we have resolutions by the commission on the status of women. So we put, there are, we put, we consider five priority areas for our intervention. One is economic, women's economic empowerment under which we try to promote the library food and employment and entrepreneurship development for women in the developing countries. And the second is women's rights and security. We would like to focus on the conflict, situation, natural disaster and also the trafficking of women and children especially in Asian region. And the third priority area is the women's education and lifetime health. This is a very traditional area we have been promoting under JICA's programs. And the fourth is a gender responsive governance. And we've been supporting the national machineries for the advancement of women in many developing countries like women's ministers and women's affairs ministries in Afghanistan and Cambodia. And we've been also supporting the gender sensitive decentralization policies and democracy movements and we've been promoting their legal support. So the governance is a very important issue for us. And the fifth area is the gender responsive infrastructure. This is a very new area for us. This is very challenging. It's, we spent lots of money on the loan for this infrastructure, but we have not yet much, we haven't done much on the gender issues in these infrastructure areas. Just quickly before you move on from that, what does gender responsive infrastructure actually mean? I will give you an example later. Is it okay? Yeah, sorry. And we have three categories of a project. One is a gender equality project, which is a gender, under which we promote the gender responsive policies, strategies and institutions. And the second category is the women targeting, a project targeting women. And the third one is the gender integrated projects promoting gender mainstreaming in different sectors. And I will give you some examples for the women's economic empowerment because today's topic is the women's economic empowerment. And most of our projects are, most of our technical assistance projects are in the rural areas because majority of women in the developing countries are in the rural areas engaged in agricultural activities. So we have been implementing a project in Tanzania in the Kilimanjaro region. This is the project to increase the party production. And this is the project to increase party through the irrigated system with farm development plus some improved technologies for party production. And under this project, we promoted women's participation as 5050 with made farmers because previously, although women were the main producers for the party and they did lots of planting, reading and harvesting, we did not include them in our technical trainings. So that's why we could not achieve our targets in our project. So in the second phase of our project, we decided to involve more women farmers and we made joint OJT on the job training for women alongside with the farmers. And we also introduced some gender analysis including the time use surveys so that we will make made farmers to understand how much work is done by female farmers and so on. And we also introduced the training on the household management because most of the work is done by women farmers, but when it comes to the house consumption, decision on the house consumption, decisions have been made by made farmers. So through these household management courses, we encouraged both men and women to discuss how to spend their income and so that the welfare of the family could be improved. So as a result, the production of the party increased one ton per hectare on average. So this is a woman in one area who produced about 10 tons per hectare. So based upon these experiences, now we are introducing a new project in Kenya. It's a horticulture empowerment project and we have also got the same results out of these gender responsive approaches. Okay, I will skip. And this is one village, one product approach. We are taking this approach to about 30 countries in Africa and Asia and we are also involving lots of women in these approaches. And as a result, we get lots of good results in the improvement of the livelihood of women and press families and also communities. So and also there is another example of women in Nigeria. There are 700 women development centers all over the country and in the northern part of Nigeria where the majorities are Muslim, the women development centers are the only place where women can go out. So we are providing technical training, vocational trainings so that women can improve their economic activities. And as a result, they are creating the cooperatives and networking among themselves and we got the good evidence that their status has improved at both household and the community levels. And we are also providing lots of skills and vocational training courses for women so that their economic empowerment can be achieved. And this is one example in Pakistan where we encouraged women to enroll in the architectural department at the Technical College and it was the first time that women enrolled in this technical department and later on they got the full employment. And we also supporting the women's training centers in the Philippines and also in many parts of Asia and African countries. And as I said, the disaster risk management, women plays a very important role. So we are encouraging women to get involved in the disaster risk management basic plan making as well as providing the livelihood programs during the reconstruction processes. And also regarding security issues, I have launched three projects in Asia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam on the trafficking of anti-trafficking of women and children. And in case of Myanmar, we've been providing lots of trainings for the social workers working for the shelters. And in Vietnam, we are developing the hotlines so that the women can make phone calls before they get into trouble. So these three projects have been very successful and we are trying to expand these activities throughout the background region as well as to the South Asian countries. And regarding the peace and security, we are also providing training to the police in Congo on the sexual violence. And also we are doing lots of livelihood activities in Mindanao in the Philippines. And regarding the infrastructure and the responsive infrastructure, this is one example in India. It's a transport system and lots of women use this mass transit system. And it's very important for women to improve their mobility safely and improving their security and safety. So we provided the saris guards because sometimes their saris get, how do you say? Court in the train. So we put the saris guard and also women-only courts. We also have it in Japan during the last hours in the evenings and the mornings and evenings. So and also we strengthen, I mean we put the security cameras and emergency alarms for women. And also we encourage the women guards and staffs to be employed so that if women have any problems they can approach to these people. So these are just one example of gender responsive infrastructure development we've been implementing. And US Japan Corporation for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. We have been working on the women entrepreneurship development for Africa and Asia. And this, we had the seminar on African women's entrepreneurship development last year and also this year and in collaboration with the US government. And Ambassador Kennedy came to open this session and we also had a person from South Africa sent by the US government who was a very successful entrepreneur, entrepreneur on chicken raising projects and housing. And we will continue this kind of collaboration for the next four to five years. And also Jaika participants came to Washington DC to the US organized women entrepreneurship program last month and we have sent Mr. Ike Iieki to introduce the Kaizen programs in Japan. So we will continue this kind of collaboration. And in lower Mekon initiative, Ms. Clinton came to Cambodia a couple years ago to enhance the women's economic empowerment in the Mekon region. And Jaika has been supporting the Cambodian women's minister and providing them the technical assistance on the livelihood for rural women. And we will continue this project up to 2020. And I know that the US is trying to improve, one stop women business centers in Mekon region. So we will collaborate with that program through our Japan centers in Asia. We have about 10 Japan centers which offers business courses to both men and women in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and other areas. And also we are doing this over one village one product projects in Asia. So maybe we can also collaborate with US through these programs. So these are some topics. I can think of some joint activities. We have been already doing some women business and entrepreneurship development programs. So we can continue. And also maybe we can do a joint research or seminars on the women's access to resources or value change from a gender perspective and gender responsive result based management and gender impact analysis, which is our weak point. So we can maybe collaborate. Before we move on to Amanda, I actually like for you to talk a little bit about the gender impact analysis if you can. Seeing as you think that that's something that can be improved upon. Okay, so maybe I can speak the rest part. Sure. The time constraint. Oh, please. Yeah, I mean, I think it would be really good to get from you where you think USAID and JICA cooperation should be going to later. No, you can do that now. I can continue. Yes. This is the, this is some, my personal views about the JICA project operations. Some strengths and weakness. I think we have made a great progress in gender mainstreaming in our programs, but as a weakness, we have focused on education, health and agriculture sectors, and we haven't done much on the infrastructure, environment, disaster and PPP and other areas. And also a major focus has been on TA, technical assistance and not much on the grant aid and the loans. And also our focus has been more on Asia and Africa, so the Middle East and Latin American countries, we haven't done much. And the number of the gender-responsive projects have been increased, but still it's not being institutionalized. It's not a mandate for us, so we need to include some gender-responsive indicators in our project design metrics. And we have been doing the evaluations, midterm and final evaluations for most of our projects, but we haven't done much on the gender impact analysis. That's, so that would be our challenge. And we have been very good at making development policies to operationalize. And, but the scaling up would be our challenges for the future. And we have done a lot of capacity development for the gender issues as well, but maybe we are not so good at policy-level collaboration. And we have done lots of skills and vocational trainings in agriculture and some areas, but still it's being focused mostly on the infrastructure areas, so we have to widen the areas of our skills and vocational trainings. And we have lots of, I cannot tell you all kinds of constraints we have within Jaika in such a short time. I experienced for so many years. We have been making some progress, but our gender office is very small and we're in a weak position. And our budget is still very limited. And we have senior gender advisors like me, but there are only two of us. And Jaika's staff are very hardworking, but we are busy and we are overroaded. So we have lots of, lots of challenges in terms of our institutional arrangement. And since Prime Minister Abe made a commitment on the gender issues, I think Jaika can further promote the gender equality and the women's empowerment programs. But how long does this last and how can we materialize? It's still a big challenge for us. And there are great opportunities for us to increase the number of Japanese women development experts under Abe's initiative, but we still have some budget and personnel constraints within our organization. And we can also explore more cooperation with U.S. government on this issue, but we also have some budget and personnel constraints. And since we merged with JBIC, we can combine technical assistance grant aid and loans. It's a great opportunity for us, but if we focus too much on the loan projects, maybe the gender issues may be marginalized. So we probably, we have to develop some gender guidelines for our ODA loan programs. So these are the main challenges we are facing. So thank you so much. Great, thank you, Dr. Tanaka. And I think that leads well into you, Amanda. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. And thank you everyone this morning. I first wanna thank Matt and Amy for inviting USAID to join this panel this morning. And Kathy Cozzarelli, our senior gender advisor sends her regrets. She had a medical emergency and wasn't able to join us this morning. So I'm pinch-hitting and I work in USAID's Office of Donor Engagement and manage USAID's headquarter relationship with Japan. So I am not a gender expert. However, I am just returning from maternity leave. I just had my first baby in May. So this issue is near and dear to my own heart. And I really look forward to the dialogue. So I will share some of Kathy's remarks this morning and we'll go from there. So the topic we're discussing today is of paramount importance, gender inequality and more specifically the lack of economic empowerment, which are formidable barriers that hold women back from reaching their full potential and from making key contributions to building communities and societies. We sincerely appreciate Prime Minister Abe's speech at last year's UN General Assembly and Japan's strong commitment to changing the status quo and elevating women's economic status both domestically and in developing countries. This could be a game changer in stabilizing and growing the economies of Asia, as well as helping to lift women out of poverty and other developing nations. We have had many opportunities to discuss our mutual interests in empowering women and we look forward to continuing to partner with Japan on this critical issue, which was a top priority in our first development dialogue that we held in February. The equal participation of women in the political, economic and social systems of a society is essential to USAID's mission to end extreme poverty and promote resilient democratic societies while advancing our security and prosperity. A growing body of research demonstrates that societies with greater gender equality experience faster economic growth and benefit from greater agriculture productivity and improved food security. Let's talk specifically now why it's so important to focus on helping women enter the formal economy either as a paid member of the workforce or an entrepreneur. Too often, women work in the informal sector where wages are low, benefits are non-existent and working conditions are often appalling. Many women are absent from the workforce altogether for many reasons, including inability to find childcare, lack of marketable skills, cultural restrictions or in some cases, domestic violence. Here are a few facts to showcase the benefits of women to being involved in the economy. Improved income for women through greater workforce opportunities leads to increased savings. In transitional countries, a 1% increase in women's share of household income led to a 15% increase in national savings which led to a higher overall tax base. Improved income also promotes overall wellbeing as women tend to invest more in children and households. In Brazil, a study showed a 20% drop in the likelihood of infant mortality when women had income that they could control. Women in positions of higher management have a positive impact on firms. A study of Fortune 500 companies found that those companies with the highest number of women in positions of senior management outperformed those with the lowest by a substantial margin, 66% on capital, 53% on equity and 47% on sales. In December 2013, Vice President Biden traveled to Japan and met with Prime Minister Abe. One of the key outcomes of this discussion was the official launch of the US-Japan development dialogue with one of the key focus areas being a joint commitment to expanding our cooperation in areas such as empowering women and girls around the world. The first dialogue was held in February of this year and was designed to strengthen our collaboration in three priority areas, including gender and women's empowerment issues, as well as humanitarian assistance, disaster risk reduction and general policy coordination. We are proud to have an annual development dialogue with Japan and looking forward to our next dialogue next year. The first guiding principle of USAID's policy on gender equality and female empowerment is that gender must be integrated in all of our programming. In order to achieve this objective, the agency's standard operating procedures require that all projects that we design benefit from and incorporate the results of a gender analysis. These analyses reveal gaps, disadvantaging women in every area of economic growth and opportunity, and accordingly USAID's first priority in promoting women's economic empowerment is to integrate gender issues into all related areas of our programming, including trade, regulation, lending, infrastructure, credit and finance, entrepreneurship, education, not to mention health and governance. The particulars of the individual projects designed to empower women economically and to ensure they enter into the workforce and greater numbers vary according to what the gender analysis reveals to be the most pressing barriers to women's economic empowerment in each case. For many projects, USAID requires various targets for women's participation in training, technical assistance and other assistance. For example, in Afghanistan, our workforce development program includes at least 30% of women in a job placement program. Our Women in Leadership for Small and Medium Enterprises project promotes women's entrepreneurship in various countries by making grants to innovative programs that remove barriers to women owning and managing small and medium enterprises, including legal, social, educational and economic barriers. USAID will also support impact evaluation of these programs to inform and transform development practice in this field. We are currently doing a three-country study to understand what techniques work best to help women-owned businesses grow and flourish. In Tanzania, Feed the Future supports an innovative partnership among Land O'Lakes, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Development Lab and Women and Men Small Holder Farmers to develop technologies that save time and labor. The project offers technology, design training to small holder farmer groups, trainees, the majority of whom are women, develop technology prototypes in group settings and receive in-depth coaching from MIT trainers. Resulting technologies help alleviate time and labor burdens, encourage community-centered problem-solving and provide an opportunity for men and women to work together. The technologies that farmers develop are transforming women-only agricultural tasks into tasks in which husbands and wives work together and produce a greater overall benefit for themselves and their families. USAID's Development Innovation Ventures, or DIV, partners with Solar Sister to provide women with entrepreneur opportunities and access to clean energy in Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan. During its current scale-up phase, Solar Sister is recruiting and training 3,000 female entrepreneurs to sell 315,000 solar lights and mobile phone chargers. These women will improve public health, expand economic opportunity and provide clean energy to 1.6 million Africans. With a robust presence around the world and strong investments in areas complimentary to USAID's priorities, the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are key partners of ours as we deepen our engagement globally. USAID was very excited that our Senior Strategy Officer and former Senior Gender Coordinator, Carla Capell, was able to attend the Yokohama workshop that was referenced earlier on empowering African women entrepreneurs last spring, in which Ambassador Kennedy also made remarks. This exciting event has led to continuing cooperation between our countries in this area, especially in terms of creating synergies between the U.S. government's African Women's Entrepreneurship Program, or the AWEP program, and Japan's Japan African Business Women's Exchange Program. The government of Japan did conduct a workshop during our 2014 AWEP International Leadership Visitors Program and during the recent African Leaders Summit that was held in August. And the Japanese ambassador announced additional follow-on activities, including trainings that the U.S. and Japan will partner on in 2014 and 2015. The U.S. and Japan coordinate closely alongside 19 other member economies of APEC in the policy partnership on women and the economy. The U.S. has been focused on creating a sustainable and forward-thinking working group with an eye to tangible results. On the policy side, Japan has looked to increase women's participation in private and public sector leadership. In 2014, APEC ministers committed to continue to, quote, encourage women to set up and participate in various business networks to form new business partnerships with both men and women, unquote. As a result, the U.S. with Japanese cosponsorship will launch the WE APEC network that will provide internet-based network for existing women's groups to link and access to each other. This platform will allow private sector actors to identify women-owned businesses and provide the means for women to expand their channels and opportunities to engagement in regional trade and economic cooperation. Japan identified the leading 50 companies in the Asia Pacific region in terms of levels of female, middle, and top-level management, as well as retainment. Several of the companies are U.S.-based. These companies are leading the way in innovative programs and techniques in recruiting and retaining skilled female leaders, and they can serve as models of best practices for others. The U.S. in partnership with the Japanese has led an initiative to compile a list of sex-disaggregated indicators, which will allow the APEC economies to provide targeted capacity building for the region, identify policy changes that can move women's economic participation forward and will allow gender working groups to flag key issues that the APEC economies can work on to ensure gender equality and inclusive growth. Since the development dialogue, the U.S. and Japan have actively engaged in promoting women's security and empowerment in a third country. In India, the United States and Japan are jointly supporting the UN Women's Safe Cities program in Delhi. The Delhi initiative is part of the UN Women's Safe Cities Free of Violence Against Women Global Program, which aims to prevent sexual violence in urban public places through strategic alliances in communities, service providers, and safety officials while empowering women and girls. Without being assured that they can travel safely, women are impeded from actively participating in the economic life of their communities. India is a critical country for trilateral cooperation for women's empowerment. President Obama made that clear during his trip to Tokyo earlier this year when USAID and the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced joint funding for the Safe Cities program. We remain interested in cooperating with Japan to empower women in India, both in gender-based violence prevention and response, as well as in economic empowerment and entrepreneurship. Based on our recent success, we look forward to expanding our cooperation in gender equality and women's economic empowerment with Japan. We feel that the second convening of our development dialogue in Tokyo early next year is an excellent opportunity to do so. The United States and Japan share a commitment to expanding opportunity for women and girls around the world in line with Prime Minister Abe's commitment to promote greater economic opportunity for women in Japan and worldwide, and President Obama's vision of advancing the status of women and girls around the world. Long-term sustainable development will only be possible when both women and men enjoy equal opportunity to rise to their potential. But today, women and girls continue to face disadvantages in every sector in which we work. If we can erase these inequalities and put women on equal footing with men, we know that we can unlock human potential on a transformative scale and move closer to eradicating extreme poverty. USAID's engagement with Jaika and MOFA is undoubtedly enabling us to have an even greater impact on lives and livelihoods around the world, and we look forward to continuing this collaboration. Thank you very much. Great, thank you. Good evening, over to you. First let me again thank CSIS for convening this terrific group around a very important topic. It's very exciting to see this issue get so much attention in Washington and in Tokyo, and I know that that is gonna be meaningful in terms of our joint efforts to promote gender equality around the world. I'm speaking on behalf of the Asia Foundation, which is an international development organization based entirely in Asia. We have permanent field offices in 18 countries, so my remarks are really rooted in the experience of promoting gender equality in Asia. This year the Asia Foundation celebrated a 20 year anniversary of a dedicated women's empowerment program, and we work on three mutually reinforcing areas as it relates to women's empowerment. First, to enhance women's political participation in decision making. Second, to promote women's economic empowerment. And third, to enhance rights and security. Because we know that when women are empowered in all three of these areas, they are much better positioned to be able to play a meaningful and powerful role in their communities and society towards transformative change. And so I think it's very important for us, while we are focusing today specifically on women's economic empowerment, to acknowledge that there is a whole range of opportunity for the United States and Japan to collaborate towards promoting gender equality in ways that will amplify the impact of their separate investments and their opportunities to work jointly. So I wanted to first just note that these opportunities do encompass both policy opportunities to collaborate and sector specific interventions. And then I'll go on to talking specifically about a couple of areas of women's economic empowerment where I think the opportunities for collaboration arrive and then I'll highlight three challenges and opportunities to collaboration. So a lot of threes in what I'll be saying. As somebody who's watched United States and Japan try very hard to collaborate on official development assistance over a number of years, I was very gratified last year to hear Prime Minister Abe's forceful commitment to gender equality. It's very welcome. And I felt that it came in a very opportune time in terms of the United States and Japan's opportunities to cooperate together. As we just heard from Amanda, the United States in its own ODA has really put a focus in the last few years on trying to figure out how to ensure that gender is integrated across all of its projects. They've invested a lot of time and effort and thinking about how to do that successfully and we really are seeing the results in the field. So I think that that's an important place where there can be more collaboration with the United States and Japan. And concurrently, as an Asian nation, Japan's commitments to gender equality, particularly coming from such a high level and in such public ways, can't help but encourage other governments to evaluate and enhance their own commitments to gender equality and empowering women. And it's certainly a case that there's strength in numbers and the more attention is paid to this issue, the more we'll actually be done rather than just talking about it. So for example, I've had the opportunity in the last few years to go several times to Myanmar, Burma. And I've been struck each time by the very deep and important commitments that Japan has made to helping that country to develop. And now as the United States is increasing its own investments in Myanmar, Burma, Japan can continue to provide a wealth of advice and lessons. Those are sizable investments. They've learned a lot about what works and doesn't work. And I do hope that at the same time, the United States and Japan can have a robust dialogue about how to ensure that women have an equal voice in the development decisions that are being made as the country transitions to democracy. As we all know, concerted effort and high level commitment are really crucial to ensuring that women can play an equal role in shaping peace, in building new patterns for community level participation, and in promoting economic growth. And this is an area where the US and Japan work together, given their sizable commitments to the country, we really could see a difference in how that country transitions. So if I turn my attention now to women's economic empowerment, I'll just note that the Asia Foundation has been very active in this area for a number of years. And in particular, we've been very interested in trying to understand and address the barriers to women's participation in small and medium sized enterprises, or SMEs. As we've already heard this morning globally, the evidence is very strong that women's labor force participation is a key factor in an economy's growth, but we still have a long way to go toward empowering women economically so that they can play an equal role. For example, the latest World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report found that Asia leads only the Middle East in terms of narrowing the gap in women's economic participation. So there really is still a lot of opportunity to do better. One area of opportunity is focusing on SMEs. They are crucial engines of growth. In Asia, for example, SMEs are often viewed as the core of economic development, since they comprise the majority of businesses in the region over 90%, and they are a significant source of employment. They're a significant source of employment for both men and women, and women do participate in large numbers in SMEs, but they face some specific gender related barriers. So while rates of women's economic entrepreneurial activity can be quite high in some countries in Asia, for example, Thailand, it's about 50%. The average female owned and run enterprise is smaller than male run enterprises in terms of its total employees, in terms of its sales, and in terms of its profits. So it is clear that a focus on supporting women's roles in the SMEs sector can yield some important results. The Asia Foundation recently conducted research in four Asian countries in Indonesia and Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. We wanted to assess the constraints to women owned SMEs and women in trade. And it's not surprising, given what we know about the subconscious and explicit gender biases that often drive hiring practices, that we found through the survey that women run SMEs also hire more women as employees. So thus supporting women's SMEs is not just a strategy to empower more women to be economically engaged, but it's also a strategy for increasing women's employment. So I'll mention now three barriers to growing women run SMEs that the survey identified. And I think that both USAID and JICA are already working in some areas on these three barriers. So it's an opportunity to think about how we can collaborate more through existing investments and maybe think about some joint collaboration moving forward. The first is in access to finance. 70% of our respondents surveyed across all four countries use their entire savings as their sole source of finance for their businesses. And they cited high interest rates as the major barrier in the loan process. This was particularly true of women respondents, although it was also true for men. The loan application itself was also a barrier. The paperwork is very cumbersome. It's very complicated. So while both men and women also cited this as a serious constraint, it was more true again for women entrepreneurs. So this suggests a couple of things that we could do. First, we can ensure that women business owners have access to capital on preferential terms. And that might even mean collateral free loans because as we know, there is often a problem for women to have titled assets in their names. So having the collateral to be able to obtain the loan can make it impossible for women to obtain those loans. Secondly, we can work to address that problem of assets. Make sure that women do have the opportunity to hold assets in their name. And that's not just a legal issue, but it's also often an issue of education. A lot of countries now, there are laws on the books that allow women to hold title, but sometimes they still choose not to because of social pressures and other reasons. So there's an opportunity there to talk about why it's important to hold title. We can streamline loan applications. We can also provide training to women entrepreneurs on how to access existing finance. The second barrier is around technology. And I think this is an area that's also really ripe for opportunities for collaboration. Our study highlighted the trend of underutilization of technology in businesses run by women and also a great demand on the part of women entrepreneurs to access more technology. So Japan and the United States are both great leaders in technological innovation. This is an area where cooperation would be pretty straightforward and where a private sector involvement could also be fostered. For example, we could jointly collaborate to develop training programs that help women business owners more effectively use technology that's already available. We could collaborate on developing new, low-cost and simple technology that women entrepreneurs can use. And we can also link women with information about technology solutions that are available. So these could allow more women entrepreneurs to showcase their products online and to conduct financial transactions with mobile money solutions. And we've heard a little bit already about areas where that collaboration is starting to take place. And finally, expanding networks. So we know that networking is an important factor for business growth. And evidence suggests that networks are important not only to make connections with other business people, but also to impart skills and knowledge related to both running a business effectively and to make connections with mentors. And I thought Wendy Cutler's points on mentorship earlier were really welcome. Our survey found that across the board, women who participated in business associations tended to have larger firms and were more likely to say that they planned to expand over the next three years. Women-owned firms that interacted with associations at least sometimes were on average 38% larger than those larger than those that did not. So jointly, the United States and Japan can support the capacity of these business associations generally which already exist to reach women-owned firms more effectively to ensure that women entrepreneurs have a real voice in the business associations and an opportunity to shape their platforms. And to ensure that these business associations are creating programs that address women entrepreneurs' specific needs. In addition, and we've heard a lot already about some of these regional organizations and the opportunity I think for the United States and Japan to leverage their impact with, for example, in Asia, APEC and ASEAN, both of which have made women's economic empowerment a priority. Our survey findings showed that a solid majority of business owners interviewed were aware of both APEC and ASEAN, but actually very few of them were participating in them. So building awareness of the value of this participation would be really important. And I think the United States and Japan have a real role to play in ensuring that APEC and ASEAN continue to keep women's economic empowerment at the forefront of their agenda. So in conclusion, let me just mention three potential challenges. And one of them I think is flexibility. We should acknowledge that it's harder to be agile and flexible in an era of shrinking ODA budgets and increased accountability for those shrinking funds. For example, the United States is increasingly working through large investments and committing its ODAO for multiple years. So it becomes a little difficult to collaborate when a lot of your investments are set. On the Japan side, I think there's an opportunity for Japan through its technical cooperation and also its grants and loans to work more with and through non-governmental actors. I think this is an area where the United States has worked for a long time. And so we have some complementarity in terms of the Japanese approach and the American approach. And perhaps there's a way to try and link those modalities together so that we get more bang for the shrinking buck. And finally, I think we're gonna need some patience. It takes time and effort to figure out the modalities of partnering. It's very encouraging to hear of some areas where cooperation is already taking place. But certainly when we talk about government to government program level cooperation, while it remains very important for each government to have accountability for its own funds and be able to report to its stakeholders about how those funds are being used. And it's also challenging when sometimes our goals and objectives are either conceived differently or articulated differently in different places. So finding a way for us to agree on what we're trying to achieve and then achieve it, it can take some time. And we shouldn't be discouraged if it takes a little longer than we hoped it would. The payoffs are clear and there are at least three opportunities to be seized. First, as I mentioned earlier, as an Asia Pacific nation that's made a robust commitment to women's empowerment, Japan is poised to create a powerful demonstration effect for its neighbors. And I think the opportunity of looking at how its domestic policies to better engage women in the workforce can also be a demonstration effect for its neighbors and for the world. That's a really unique place for us to think about how Japan can pull out its lessons learned more. For example, Prime Minister Abe has recently named this record number of women in the cabinet reshuffle. It's encouraging business corporations to do the same in terms of management and board leadership. So as Japan is piloting domestic policy change in order to get more women involved in the workforce and trying to figure out how to achieve a better work-life balance for both men and women in the labor force, I think we can all learn from that. We all still face these challenges everywhere in the world. Secondly, and I was happy to hear Tanaka-san bring this up because I agree that it's a place where the United States and Japan really could collaborate is on the area of infrastructure. And Japan has made some very important contributions in terms of critical infrastructure. That's an important area for economic growth. But I do agree that it could be linked better to some of, for example, the United States efforts to promote the softer side of development such as good governance. So perhaps the United States and Japan working together could find some ways to ensure that these infrastructure projects are well connected to an inclusive set of stakeholders and their interests. That we ensure that as these development plans are being undertaken, that women have an active and influential role in influencing the planning, and that we are reviewing all of these projects to ensure that the impact on both men and women is positive. Finally, I wanna just go back to this policy-level opportunity. The United States has really done a great job in the last few years of thinking about how to integrate gender across its programs. And I think most importantly, thinking not just about the policy of why integrating gender is important, but giving the tools to its staff and to its partners about how to do that well, how to do a gender analysis so that you understand how you're programming will have a different effect on both men and women, and then tailoring your program to address those differences that you have found and making that flow all the way through to the monitoring and evaluation plan. And then once they've got the tools, putting in some accountabilities. It's great to try to persuade, but it's also very helpful, I think, to have some accountability measures that you can use to discuss when you find that gender integration isn't taking place at this level that you expected. And so I think having a dialogue between the United States and Japan on what's working and not working in each of their ODA programs would potentially help both of them to be even more effective. At a time of shrinking aid budgets, we need to think creatively about multiplier effects, and that's why I personally am so excited about this opportunity for the United States and Japan to reinvigorate their ODA joint planning on the issue of gender equality. Thank you. So we have about 10 minutes for questions. Ken, there's one over there. Hi, Sylvia Cabez, U.S. Agency for International Development. I really appreciate hearing all the panelists' comments and experiences and of all the opportunities we have to collaborate with Japan specifically on women's empowerment. And I'm glad we're talking about women's economic empowerment because we're still struggling with what women's empowerment looks like and how we measure that. So that's another week-long seminar. I would really hope that we have the opportunity to work together on some of the lessons learned and cautionary tales, especially in terms of the challenges of working cross-sectorally. One example we often find, for example, is in trafficking, where the way we are structured, both organizationally and budget-wise, doesn't allow us to collaborate as closely internally as we like. For trafficking, my colleagues in democracy and governments don't always know the economic push-and-pull factors behind trafficking. And my colleagues in economic growth say that it's a democracy and governance issue. Another example in the sector I work in, which is agriculture and food security, is the choice of value chain. What crop to plant? So not only do we have to consider the income and nutrition implications, but there are also a number of other factors. For example, access to firewood and water. So that not only is that an infrastructure problem, but it also presents safety and security issues, not to mention climate change. So how do we work cross-sectorally? How do we integrate gender? How do we collaborate better internally with our implementing partners and with our sister donor agencies? Are all subjects that I hope will have a chance to discuss further with our friends in the government of Japan? Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Tanaka, that might be a good question for you. When we implement new programs, we, the Office for the Gender Equality screen all the projects from a gender perspective. So we try to integrate those concerns at the planning stage. But our problem is that how we can follow through to the implementation and evaluation stages. So we have to improve our institutional arrangements further so that we can have, how can I say? When, after we made a comments, how can it be materialized and bring out the real impacts to the people? So that's the kind of steps we've been taking. And we understand that the economic empowerment per se cannot bring out the empowerment of women. So that's why we are trying to improve the women's involvement in the decision-making processes. I think we have to take that the governance issues more seriously when we talk about the women's economic empowerment. Great, thank you. Candice, if you want to say anything to that. I would just echo Sylvia's comments and having been with USAIDs for about eight years now, seeing the development of our gender and women's empowerment policy and the integration and implementation of that policy across our missions has been very interesting. And I think we're still working through the how to actually operationalize that. So you see the commitment to the policy at the highest levels of our organization, but down to the field level, actually understanding the opportunities across our different sectors to work more closely together on this issue. We're still learning from those experiences and look forward to sharing the experiences with Japan as well and learning from your experiences on that front. So as someone who's ignorant about how USAID works, on the ground, do you see... So CSIS did this great report on the State Department and Economic Statecraft and how the agencies within the State Department couldn't necessarily collaborate within DC, but when it got to on the ground, they were able to implement sort of more integrated strategies. Is that something you've seen at USAID and is there a good partnership on the ground between USAID counterparts with Japanese counterparts or... There are good partnerships. I can't name them off the top of my head, but the way our organization is structured, our missions in country have a lot of ability to define their programming. So we really leave it to our missions on the ground to identify the opportunities to work with other donors, including Japan. And we sometimes have a challenge in that sense because of the way that Japan's ODA is structured, more of decision-making is at the headquarters level and less at the mission level. So that's a constant pull and pull and that's kind of where my role in DC is important to sort of help bridge that gap and we also have a development counselor that sits in our embassy in Tokyo that helps to bridge the gap with the JICA and MOFA headquarters there in Tokyo. Great, Eileen, did you have anything to say? Well, I guess I would just say that I think that silos are a challenge for all of us. It's certainly not just a government challenge. And it is one reason why I think that a gender analysis at the sector level and at the project level does create a really terrific opportunity if you do it in a substantive way to bring in your colleagues from across different sectoral areas of expertise. You know, when you sit down and you start thinking about how men's and women's roles and opportunities are different as it relates either to a sector or a type of project that you're planning to do. And you just brainstorm freely which is one of the things that a good gender analysis can allow you to do with some guiding questions. Really trying to unpack the power dynamics that are at play in that sector or country. Ideas I think will emerge and you'll be able to see those linkages possibly more clearly than when you're just talking about it in an abstract way. Is trafficking an issue of migration? Is it an issue of safety? Is it an issue of power? Yes, it is all of these. Great, thank you. Are there any more questions? Okay, one over there. Hi, thank you. Maggie Marshall from Freedom House. I appreciate you acknowledging that women's empowerment gender equality happens outside of just economic empowerment but in the programming that you all have seen on the ground did you, since you were including more women in traditionally male spaces, did you see attitudinal challenges with bringing women into that space and kind of how did you work to change the dialogue between men and women and increasing their participation in these spaces? Thanks. Great, thank you. Why don't we start with you this time, Eileen? Thanks, that is a great question and it's certainly the case that you can get some tension when there's a perception that you're really just trying to focus on women and preference women. So I think it's important to start by saying first, men can be really great allies in this conversation. We need to make sure that we are including men and we see them as champions and we're fully involving them in the work that we're trying to do. Secondly, I think that getting both men and women involved in seeing the benefits of having women be more engaged in the economy, the case is actually a very strong one. There's a lot of great data and it's, I think, generally pretty clear to people early on when you start talking about some of those benefits, you know, having more income in the home, having the opportunity to enhance that income and that's gonna benefit the whole family, not just women. So I think really trying to talk through that and ensure that you're fully engaging both men and women in your projects is critical. Amanda. I would just echo those comments. Okay. Dr. Tanaka Tiaven. When we implemented the rural development programs for women in Afghanistan, we first approached men leaders in Shula so that they can understand our approaches and appreciate. So whenever we implement the women's empowerment programs, we try to approach the local male leaders so that they can appreciate and understand. So when we implement the Afghanis, the women's center programs in Nigeria, we also approached male members in the communities and they really appreciated after their wives learned so much from the center and the wives started earning the income. You know, they were not offended for their wives to be educated. They were very proud of their wives and they were very proud that their wives brought the money income to the families. So we always try to approach male colleagues at the same time so that they can also change their attitude as well. I'll also add there was yesterday a campaign launched, He For She, which Emma Watson launched and there's been a huge backlash against it which is very disappointing. But at the same time, those of you who haven't seen the speech, it's a fantastic articulation of why this matters so much. So I think we have time for one more question and then we'll wrap up, please. Thank you. Tom Tashif from Princeton. And I'm wondering, you know, we can all agree that I think women's inclusion in every sense of the term is valuable intrinsically in and of itself as a goal of a development project. But in your last response to the question you hinted at a second idea that I was curious about which is the instrumental value of women's empowerment. So to what extent have either of your agencies seen programs that have an explicit women's empowerment component actually performing better along some of these I suppose gender and sensitive metrics maybe. I'm thinking of examples of female targeted CCT programs in Latin America that actually wind up outperforming traditional programs in terms of vaccination or school enrollment, these non-gender sensitive metrics. So I'd love to hear what you've seen since you started including gender in program design. Thank you. Excellent, thank you. So we don't have much time, so I'm gonna ask you guys to answer the question and wrap up at the same time. Dr. Tanaka, why don't we start with you? Well, answer the question about what JICA projects maybe have that don't have, how JICA projects that have a gender component weigh up in terms of how they empower people versus projects that don't, and then wrap up toward the end as well, please. JICA people is very difficult to convince unless they themselves experience the good results from their own projects. So even if we show the evidence from other agencies, they are not really convinced. So we have to collaborate with other agencies so that, how can I say, we together can bring more evidence-based programs so that our people can be convinced. So we need a lot more collaboration from US government, US agencies, and other NGO organizations. That is a great question, and I am probably not the best person to answer that question. Sylvia, my colleague in the audience, may have an idea, if not, I'm not putting on the spot, Sylvia, but I am certain that we do have some experiences in that, in seeing that a gender-based program provides larger results. The evidence, I'm sure, is clear. It's changing mindsets, I think, to your point, that it's a priority. And we have had the same challenges, so. And we definitely look forward to sharing our lessons learned, learning from the Japanese experience, and working together going forward. Thank you, thank you. Eileen, do you have the data? Well, I, of course, can't speak for USAID or JICA, but I will say, if you look at the literature, there are a lot of fairly great examples of how the impact of targeting women specifically does have a greater effect. For example, as I think was mentioned earlier, just the fact of how women use their money. So if you get money into the hands of women through vocational training that allows them to exercise their skills or start their own business, or even get a job, you see a much greater effect in terms of the welfare of the family. And some interesting effects also in terms of total family size, which affects the health of children in the family and education of those children. So the multiplier effects of investing in women are very clear, but you certainly shouldn't do it at the exclusion of also engaging men because men will also benefit from women being more empowered. Wonderful, I think that's a fantastic note to end on. Thank you to all of you for joining us here today, and thanks to everyone for engaging. Thank you.