About 10 years ago, several female faculty members at the time were having a very difficult time balancing child-rearing and research, so we decided to do something about it and applied for the "Female Researcher Support Model Development Project" funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). After the project was selected, we initiated various measures, and in particular, our Academic Assistant System, which provides research assistants to researchers who are pregnant or raising children, became a pioneer among other universities. The efforts of the Office of Participation have continued even after the project ended, and it can be said that the awareness and understanding of gender equality among faculty and staff has improved year by year.。
In the past, the goal of gender equality was "to help those in need," but recently I think it has changed to "we cannot secure excellent human resources unless we make the workplace more accessible to women. In order to secure excellent human resources, it is also necessary to have open recruitment for women only. This is because, as the concept of "affirmative action" suggests, minorities need to be treated generously. Currently, the low proportion of women in the workforce makes it difficult for women to enter the industry, so I would like to start by increasing the proportion, even if only slightly. Japan's research capabilities will decline if we are unable to fully utilize our excellent human resources, so I believe that increasing the proportion of women in one of the national universities is an urgent task.