Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at analyzing the recent reform of legal education in Japan from the point of view of gender equality by taking into account that apparently gender-blind policies as well might have beneficial repercussions on the level of women's empowerment within a society.

Paper long abstract:

Building a "society in which women shine" seems to be one of the priorities of the current Japanese government, as stated by the Prime Minister Shinzō Abe also in front of the international community at the 68th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2013. However, it is a fact that Japan has been struggling with equal opportunities legislation since at least the eighties, starting from the signature (1980) and ratification (1985) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), soon followed by the passing (1985) and enactment (1986) of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act (EEOA).

Regardless of the impact of the EEOA and subsequent legislation on the labor market, which is still a matter of debate, it is nowadays clear also to politicians and legislators that apparently gender-blind policies, too, might have beneficial repercussions on the level of women's empowerment within a society. For instance, in the Japan Revitalization Strategy of 2016, the reduction of working hours accompanied by an improvement in productivity is mentioned as an instrument to enable people who could not work due to other time-consuming activities such as child-rearing to find a job. In this context, a reform aimed at increasing the number of legal professionals and their diversity could certainly be regarded as a good chance for women.

My purpose is therefore to analyze the reform under the light of gender equality in order to understand whether and how it will shape the path towards a more inclusive society. In particular, it is clear from the data collected by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations in its White Paper on Attorneys (2015) that the percentage of female attorneys spiked in the past decade - although it has in fact been slowly but steadily growing over the last sixty-five years - reaching 18.2% in 2015, and a similar trend can be observed for judges. Such variations probably stemmed from a number of factors that might not be easy to isolate, but a preliminary evaluation of the phenomenon is due.