TOKYO - In her campaign to become Japan’s first female prime minister, Ms Sanae Takaichi made a bold promise to narrow the country’s wide gender gap in politics and lift the number of women in Cabinet to a par with socially progressive Nordic countries.

Now that she has shattered the glass ceiling to be

chosen leader of the ruling party on

Oct 4

– setting her on course to emulate her hero, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female premier – Ms Takaichi must try to deliver on promises her party has struggled to keep.

“The emergence of a single female leader alone may not drastically improve women’s standing in politics,” said Dr Tohko Tanaka, a gender studies professor at the University of Tokyo, noting it was 26 years after Mrs Thatcher’s premiership before Britain had its second female leader, Mrs Theresa May.

Japan’s next prime minister “must tackle gender issues with a long-term perspective, amid severe labour shortages and the alarmingly inadequate inclusion of women”, Dr Tanaka said.

Japan ranked 118 out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report, the lowest among the Group of Seven industrial powers.

While gender equality was not a top issue in the Liberal Democratic Party’s election campaign that focused on tackling inflation and

rule-br...