National Women’s Education Center of Japan

The National Women's Education Center (NWEC) was founded in 1977 as Japan's only national educational institution for women, with the aim of promoting efforts to create a gender-equal society. Since then, NWEC has been working in collaboration with gender equality promotion centers, women's organizations, local governments, universities, schools, and companies across Japan. In addition, NWEC has continued to play a role as a focal point in creating a gender-equal society by holding seminars that promote women's education and gender equality, offering support for education and learning, conducting specialized research, and providing information and material. NWEC has been continuously working to strengthen the foundation of a gender-equal society by approaching not only instructors and stakeholders in women's education and leaders promoting gender equality in various fields, but also men and younger generations.

The Working Group for Enhancing Functions of the NWEC and Gender Equality Centers was established within the Cabinet Office in December 2022. It has been striving to create a gender equal society across the country by discussing various issues based on two policies. The first is to strengthen the center's functions of training skilled people as a hub by transferring the　NWEC's management to the Cabinet Office (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has continued to have joint jurisdiction) in order to fully support all centers across Japan. The second is to enhance each center's functions of educating and securing professional talents, and reinforcing coordination between related institutions and organizations in order to fully perform its role in response to each region's issues. The report compiled in April 2023 clearly showed more than 40 issues that the NWEC would have to tackle after its transfer to the Cabinet Office based on the necessary fortification of workforce and an adjustment in budget. Following the release of this report, descriptions about these more than 40 issues have been included in the Intensive Policy for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women 2023 (the Basic Policy on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women 2023) and the Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform 2023 (the　Basic Policy 2023), both of which were formulated by the government.

In the Global Gender Gap Report released in 2023, Japan ranked 125th among 146 countries, continuing to hit a new record low. To improve this situation, we at NWEC will swiftly address the issues shown in the 2023 report.

As for our activities, we will continue to provide people from different age groups across a wider area with online learning opportunities using ICT. That includes on-demand learning content and live-streaming seminars. We will also conduct face-to-face group seminars. Reinforcing coordination between gender equality centers across the country, we will strive to increase opportunities to collaborate and cooperate with as many stakeholders as possible, such as companies, universities, schools, and non-profit organizations.

We thank you for your continued support and cooperation.

March 31, 2024
Natsuko Hagiwara
President
National Women's Education Center (NWEC)