When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that he intended to promote women in the workplace, many people were understandably skeptical. After all, Abe is known as a conservative, and conservatives in most countries support traditional gender roles. Perhaps for this reason, many writers rushed to declare that "womenomics" wasn't for real. But I believed that something big had changed in the Japanese mindset, and that this time really was different. I came away from a recent trip to Japan even more convinced that womenomics is a deep and permanent shift that will reverberate throughout the country's social and economic structure.
The first reason for my increased confidence is that I now understand the strongest force behind the push to hire women. It's not Abe -- it's demography.
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