140 years and counting; Once again, no women nominations for Bank of Japan's top spots

No woman has held any of the top posts at Japan's national bank in the last 140 years. As per reports, despite the bank's promises of gender diversity, this is not going to change anytime soon. Reuters reports that the nation's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will once again forego nominating women for the top positions at the bank.

Kishida will soon nominate the Bank of Japan's future governor and the two deputies. Citing officials with knowledge of the matter, Reuters reports that he will be nominating academic economist Kazuo Ueda, as BOJ governor on Tuesday, and Ryozo Himino and Shinichi Uchida as his deputies.

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Two years back, the Bank of Japan had pledged to improve its gender disparity. It had vowed that it'll do that by raising the ratio of female managers from six per cent to 10 per cent; a goal that falls far below the European Central Bank's score of 30 per cent of females in management roles.

It is not only the BOJ. Gender disparity or the lack of it is a widespread problem in the traditional nation. The current PM has only two women in his 20-person cabinet.

The BOJ nomination has once again underscored the hurdles women in Japan face in their fight to reach the country's top leadership positions.

As Momoko Nojo, a prominent campaigner for gender equality in Japan, puts it, "this is a problem that is not going to change easily."

Nojo further said that "the BOJ, even now, from the entry level it's mainly men ... There's no diversity."

As per a last year report by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, when it comes to gender equality, Japan's central bank ranks at 142 of 185 central banks globally.

Japan ranked 116 of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum's global report on gender parity last year.

Unfortunately, it is not just Japan, worldwide. Only about 11 per cent of central banks had a female governor and 37 per cent had female deputy governors.

(With inputs from agencies)

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