Japan’s prime minister has joined more than 50 of her fellow female legislators to push for more girls’ toilets in parliament, saying current will increase in girls’s illustration have led to lengthy queues for the lavatory.
Just two cubicles at present serve 73 female members at Tokyo’s male-dominated House of Representatives, based on a petition filed by female members of parliament on December 12.
The nation’s first female chief Sanae Takaichi, elected final yr, is amongst 58 lawmakers to again the request, which has garnered help from members throughout seven events and impartial teams, based on the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party.
“Before the main assembly session, a truly large number of female lawmakers line up in front of the women’s restroom,” female CDP member Yasuko Komiyama stated.
Japan is a culturally conservative nation, the place each politics and workplaces have lengthy been dominated by older males. It additionally maintained its low place on the World Economic Forum’s newest Global Gender Gap Index, rating 118th out of 148 international locations.
Last yr noticed the historic election of Takaichi, and an increase in female lawmakers to 73. Women nonetheless maintain slightly below 16 % of seats, in the House of Representatives, the decrease home of the National Diet, based on IPU Parline.
The undersupply of toilets is “a critical issue that could potentially impact the conduct of proceedings and the performance of duties,” the cross-party petition learn.
In a Facebook put up, Komiyama stated the problem impacts not solely female lawmakers, but additionally female workers and a rising variety of girls journalists.
Female opposition MP Tomoe Ishii added in an Instagram put up that the scarcity has “long been an issue.”
“There is a prevailing reluctance to raise the issue of adding more women’s restrooms in workplaces and schools within society,” she added.
The National Diet constructing, in Tokyo, predates girls’s suffrage in the nation.
Completed in 1936, it stood for virtually a decade earlier than girls gained the suitable to vote in 1945, adopted by the election of the primary female MP a yr later.