Japanese car manufacturer Honda has appointed its first female board member, following in the footsteps of General Motors that appointed its first female CEO in December last year.
Hideko Kunii, a professor of engineering, was named as the newest board member for Honda earlier this week, and she is set to take office in June, pending a shareholder meeting.
She is the first female director at one of the big three Japanese carmakers; neither Toyota or Nissan have any women on their boards. Japanese companies have come under fire of late with their focus on hiring and promoting only Japanese males to senior positions. Putting women in leadership positions is a pillar of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies to revive the fading Japanese economy.
Kunii is a former corporate senior vice president of Japanese electronics giant Ricoh Co. She is also a software specialist and has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Texas in Austin, and is in charge of promoting gender equality at the University of Tokyo.
Companies in Japan are being encouraged to tap into diversity, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declaring last year that refortifying Japan’s economy lies heavily with making the workforce accessible to women and removing obstacles holding women back from corporate roles, including difficulties finding childcare, cultural expectations and a tax system that encourages women to stay in poor-paying part time jobs. It was “no longer a matter of choice for Japan’, but ‘a matter of the greatest urgency”, he said.
While Honda has made headway in appointing its first female director, Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault-Nissan, announced in January that his company had introduced strict quotas to encourage more women to apply, but they have yet to appoint a women to its board.
Corporate vice president, Asako Hoshino, is among the top Nissan executives, and the highest ranking female within the company.
Honda isn’t the first auto-company to shatter glass ceilings. Mary Barra took the CEO position at General Motors last year, making her the first woman ever to run a major automaker.
There was brief controversy following her appointment after Fox Business initially reported that Barra was being paid an annual salary that was considerably less than her male predecessor, Dan Akerson. However, it was later revealed that the numbers crunched by Fox Business excluded stock options, which will bring Barra’s annual salary to around $14.4 million — 60% more than Akerson earned in 2013.