TOKYO, Sept 12 — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is bidding to focus global attention on Japan’s efforts to empower women by hosting Christine Lagarde and dozens of other high— profile women at a three-day assembly starting today.

Japan’s foreign ministry is billing the first World Assembly for Women as an opportunity to show Abe’s seriousness about creating a society “where women can shine.” Participants including Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy will be invited to come up with a “to do” list after today’s symposium and a series of round table sessions tomorrow.

Faced with a shrinking and aging population and a reluctance to accept large-scale immigration, Abe is seeking to lure more women to make up a looming shortfall in the labour market. Boosting female employment rates to match those of men could expand the economy by as much as 12.5 per cent, according to Kathy Matsui, chief equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Tokyo.

“The idea that men are at the centre has somehow become entrenched in our country,” Abe told a group of women invited to his official residence last month. “We need to bring about a major change in society to break through that.”

While Abe appointed a record-tying five women to his cabinet in a reshuffle last week, women have less representation in Japan’s legislature than they do in Saudi Arabia. Only 69 per cent of university-educated women are employed, compared with average of 80 per cent among in the nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to an OECD report for 2014.

External pressure

Abe is aiming to have women in 30 per cent of management positions in all fields by the time Tokyo hosts the Olympic Games in 2020. The average percentage of women currently in management positions in Japanese companies is 6.2 per cent, according to a survey published last month. More than half of the 11,017 companies surveyed by Teikoku Databank Ltd, Japan’s largest credit research company, said they had no female managers.

Japan ranks 134th out of 188 countries in the Inter— Parliamentary Union ranking of female parliamentary representation, compared with Saudi Arabia at 76.

A lack of childcare is one of the main barriers to women returning to the labour force. Abe has already pledged to eliminate waiting lists for childcare by increasing the number of places by 400,000 between 2012 and 2017. He is facing a battle against time to lift female workforce participation, with a government panel forecasting the labour force may shrink to 38 million in 2060 from 65.8 million in 2013.

The ministry expects an audience of about 1,000 people at the symposium today and plans to make the assembly an annual event. Discussions on the theme of women’s empowerment will be held in other areas of Japan on September 15.

The conference “will put more pressure on Japan to act,” said Yoko Kamikawa, former vice-minister for Internal Affairs, in an interview last month. “There will be more transparency.” — Bloomberg