Archive for year: 2017

Noelle Takahashi, our 2012 Fellow, was recently featured on the Medill Reports Chicago article, “Will Japan’s ‘Womenomics’ work?” The article is about gender inequality in Japan.

Noelle emphasizes gender inequality still exists in Japan, and she sees it herself from her own experience. She also explains many women in Japan are living under pressure.

Noelle says in the article, “Japanese women are expected to be a good wife and good mothers, and if you get married, you are expected to cook well suddenly, and you are expected to have children.”

As one of a few female politicians in Japan, she advocates for creating a better society where women leadership is more valued.

Click here to find more detail about the article!

Megumi Ishimoto, 2014 Fellow, leads the Grassroots Academy Tohoku. Megumi and the Academy recently hosted a women leadership training program in Seattle from February 5th to 11th, 2017. 10 young female leaders from Tohoku participated in a capacity-development workshop at iLEAP, a Seattle-based leadership institute. During their stay, participants met local residents and had opportunities to present their work in Tohoku and the state of recovery. This training increased the capacity of young female leaders active in Tohoku through equipping them with new skills and building self-confidence and awareness.

Photos by Grassroots Academy Tohoku

On January 26th, JWLI Program Manager, Kozue Sawame, gave a presentation to 18 undergraduate students from the Showa Boston Institute, the Boston satellite campus of Showa Women’s University in Tokyo, Japan. The talk was held as part of the Women and Leadership course offered jointly with Emanuel College. In hope that some of these 18 students would choose to be engaged in the social sector as a career in the future, Kozue mainly addressed introduced how JWLI as a unique career development opportunity. to empower Japanese women to become leaders and the operation process of the program. The later discussion session about the importance of new generation’s women leadership in Japan was lively. Kozue and the students had a wonderful time discussing women’s empowerment and leadership in Japan.