It¡¯s hard to decide who should be more embarrassed by Ivanka Trump presiding over Tokyo¡¯s annual ¡°womenomics¡± event: Shinzo Abe or my fellow Americans.
The first daughter made cognitive dissonance great again on Nov. 3, keeping a straight face as she said ¡°all too often, our workplace culture fails to treat women with appropriate respect¡± and ¡°harassment can never be tolerated.¡± She¡¯s part of a White House, mind you, claiming Harvey Weinstein¡¯s accusers are brave truth tellers, but Donald Trump¡¯s are scheming liars.
This epic transference is an apt metaphor for why Abe¡¯s womenomics is flopping: all photo ops, no substance. A day before Prime Minister Abe and Ivanka mugged for the cameras, the World Economic Forum once again downgraded Japan¡¯s gender-equality ranking. On Abe¡¯s watch, Japan has gone from 98th place to 114th. It now lags Guinea, Nepal and Guatemala, sits 14 rungs below India and 104 behind the Philippines.
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