Japan’s first female PM, but Takaichi is not a feminist

Sanae Takaichi is poised to become Japan’s first female prime minister, but many of her positions are socially conservative in an often still deeply patriarchal nation.

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Takaichi, whose hero is Margaret Thatcher, became head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Saturday and will likely take office later this month.

She has promised to appoint a cabinet with “Nordic” levels of women, up from just two under outgoing premier Shigeru Ishiba.

Takaichi, 64, has also said she “hopes to raise awareness” about women’s health struggles and spoken candidly about her own experience with menopause.

Despite these gestures, her policy positions on gender place her on the right of an already conservative LDP.

She is against revising a 19th-century law requiring married couples to share the same surname, which overwhelmingly results in women taking their husbands’ names.

Takaichi also wants Japan’s imperial family to stick to its male-only succession rules, and is “fundamentally opposed” to same-sex marriage. Yuki Tsuji, a professor specialising in politics and gender at Tokai University, said Takaichi “has no interest in women’s rights or gender equality policies”.