Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn says the Japanese prime minister's push to have women in 30 percent of his country's top positions by 2020 is too ambitious.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would like the male/female ratio of Japan's managerial jobs to fall more in line with other power players in the world.
Women occupy 7 percent of Nissan's managerial positions, much higher than the country's 2.9 percent standing for females in manager-level positions. But despite beating the national average in managerial diversity, Ghosn said he felt attempting to facilitate the promotion of women into 30 percent of the county's manager-level position by 2020 would only set women up to fail.
"Frankly, what I don't want is a burst of females in management with a lot of failures," Ghosn said. "We need to show successes. If people start to see ... failures, I think it's going to be counterproductive."
While women at rival Honda fill only 1 percent of its manager-level jobs, the company has promoted a woman to its board of directors. Toyota, however, hasn't appointed women to any roles of power within its company and the automaker is said to have no plans to appoint women into manager-level roles.
Women account for 3.9 percent of board members of Japanese automakers, much lower than the United States' 12 percent and France's 18 percent. But Ghosn said he was being "prudent" and "conservative" in speaking out against the prime minister's 2020 target.
"I totally understand and support the Japanese government's efforts to promote women in society. Obviously the Japanese government has a lot of objective reasons to do that," Ghosn said. "But I think 30 percent is ambitious."
Keiko Tashiro, an executive managing director for Daiwa Securities Group, said she hoped the prime minister's 2020 target would spur needed debate on the issue of diversity among Japan's managerial jobs.
"I think targets are, to some extent, necessary," Tashiro said. "There should be more discussions over why such targets are necessary, and there must be more debate about how such targets can be achieved."
In 2013's Gender Gap Report (PDF), which measures economic equality and political participation and is generated by the World Economic Forum, Japan was ranked 105th, though it's the world third-largest economy with a gross domestic product of $4.8 trillion. The U.S., the world's top economy with a GDP of $17.5 trillion, ranked 23rd in the 2013 Gender Gap Report. Iceland ranked at the top of the report's list, followed by the Scandinavian countries.
