Shinzo Abe Vowed Japan Would Help Women ‘Shine.’ They’re Still Waiting. - The New York Times

Female workers remain largely shut out of management jobs, and many take part-time work because of overwhelming family responsibilities, despite policies that Mr.

TOKYO — This was supposed to be the era when Japan finally stepped beyond its centuries of patriarchal dominance and empowered women in the workplace.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the country’s prosperity depended on it, and promised policies to help women “shine.” He even gave the push a name: womenomics.

Hojo worked mostly with women but was overseen by men — a still-common situation in Japan that belies Mr.

Hojo, like many women in Japan, cannot accept a full-time job even after Mr.

Abe ends a record-long run in office, one of the more consequential entries on his list of unfulfilled aspirations is his goal of promoting women in the work force to address dire demographic problems like a declining and aging population.

And while the percentage of women in the work force rose during his prime ministership to an all-time high of 52.2 percent, more than half of them work in part-time or contract jobs that offer few benefits or paths to career advancement.

Although many women are getting back into the work force, it’s often for “an odd job to put a little extra money into the household pocket,” said Nobuko Kobayashi, a partner at EY Japan, a consulting firm.

“So do we really call that womenomics in the sense that it’s augmenting the status of women in society?” she said.

Abe became prime minister in 2012, according to the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training, a think tank.

“The main reason for Japan’s shockingly low numbers of women politicians is the L.D.P.’s failure to recruit and nominate women,” said Gill Steel, a professor of political science at Doshisha University in Kyoto and the editor of “Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan.”.

A group of 10 Liberal Democratic women in Parliament wrote a letter to the three candidates for prime minister urging them to support a minimum threshold of 30 percent female representation among national lawmakers.

Yayoi Kimura, a Liberal Democratic member of the House of Representatives who endorsed the letter, said that when she co-sponsored a bill to provide a tax break for unmarried parents, some of her male colleagues argued that most single mothers were either mistresses of rich men or hyperambitious career women who did not need government assistance.

Kimura said, because women of all parties banded together to vote it through.

Mikawa, whose husband is currently posted in Tokyo, said that simply increasing the number of women in Parliament could foster more women-friendly policies.

She said she wanted the next prime minister to use his bully pulpit to promote gender equality

Invoking an idiomatic expression — nagai mono ni makareru — on people’s tendency to follow authority, she said: “If the government, which is in the strongest position, demonstrates” the importance of giving women more opportunities in the workplace, “private companies would follow suit.”