Amid growing global skepticism toward “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), Japanese universities are rapidly embracing surprisingly radical DEI measures. In Japan’s university admissions, admission quotas for females (Joshi-waku, literally “Girls’ Quotas”) grant eligibility exclusively to women and are being introduced successively in highly competitive STEM programs. Both national and private institutions employ this scheme. Typically, applicants under female admission quotas face either a less rigorous written examination than the regular track or no written test at all.
The rationales vary: Japan’s exceptionally low percentage of women in STEM among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members, mounting global pressure on universities to promote DEI, Japan’s low ranking in the Global Gender Gap Index, and the oft‑repeated maxim that “diversity matters.” The phrase “let’s follow the world’s lead” has become a stock slogan to justify these radical measures.
Because Japan is ethnically homogeneous compared with the United States and EU member states, DEI targets are effectively limited to women. Although women’s higher‑education enrollment rate already exceeds that of men, only “women in STEM” receive relief through the extreme measure of quotas (Fig.1). Other significant barriers—such as those faced by students from rural areas or low‑income backgrounds—are largely ignored except for a handful of special scholarships; they are never addressed through such drastic devices as quotas. (Faculties that train physicians or teachers do maintain “regional quotas,” which require graduates to serve for a fixed period in designated areas to alleviate local shortages. These do not constitute affirmative action.)
Fig.1 Scatter Plot of High School Graduate Advancement/Employment. Image from the paper
University admissions are a zero‑sum game. If affirmative action is to be adopted, diverse disadvantages should be weighted appropriately, yet such efforts are entirely absent.
Japan’s affirmative‑action policies have long trailed American and European precedents. Universities often cite “international standards” when adopting admission quotas for females. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, quotas of this kind in university admissions are illegal sex discrimination in advanced economies such as the United States and the EU. Even before the 2023 SFFA v. Harvard decision, both the 1978 UC v. Bakke ruling and Title IX of 1972 made admission quotas for females unlawful. By 2000, the EU had established that sex-based quotas constituted illegal discrimination. (One private university in France still operates an admission quota for females, but this is a legacy exception stemming from its origins as a women’s college.)
Proponents of admission quotas for females never mention these facts, repeatedly insisting that “affirmative action is common at universities worldwide.” Indeed, some jurisdictions in the West allow milder forms—tie‑break preferences, bonus points, special scholarships, or preparatory programs—but the extreme measure of quotas in admissions remains illegal discrimination throughout advanced Western nations. While advocates invoke comparisons with the West to justify their objectives, they simultaneously employ methods that diverge sharply from Western human‑rights norms. The result is an ideologically driven double standard that is indefensible academically. Unfortunately, Japanese scholars critical of admission quotas for females are exceedingly few.
In U.S. academia, conservative skepticism toward DEI has reportedly been underestimated for years; Japan surpasses that margin by far. If ideology‑based discrimination continues to be institutionalized, the academic damage will become impossible to ignore, and the future of the academy will be in jeopardy. The unprecedented practice of cherry‑picking, distorting, or fabricating Western examples to justify overt discrimination is historically unparalleled.
Our hope lies in the backlash from high‑school students themselves. A 2024 survey (n = 3,762, ± 1.9 %) by the major prep‑school group Kawai‑Juku shows that nearly 45 percent of students oppose admission quotas for females, up from about 35 percent (n = 2,412, ± 1.6 %) in 2023—a ten‑point jump in a single year that reflects mounting resistance to rapidly expanding quotas. Among the male students who are the victims of this discrimination, the opposition rate would certainly be much higher.
When the Civil Aviation College, Japan’s premier pilot-training institution, announced that roughly 20 percent of its seats would go to women without the usual written examinations, the story was picked up by mainstream media and ignited nationwide debate. People who normally pay little attention to university admissions objected on public-safety grounds, noting that the college customarily requires rigorous English and science tests; many aviation experts voiced concern about admitting pilots who bypass the English exam in a country whose official language is Japanese.
To sound the alarm from an academic standpoint, I have published two peer‑reviewed articles on the discrimination in Japanese university admissions described above. [1,2] I hope that persistent, evidence‑based scrutiny will help protect students’ human rights. Researchers and journalists interested in Japan’s radical pursuit of DEI are encouraged to get in touch. Urgent international pressure on Japan to respect human rights is needed. [email protected]
To universities that continue the discriminatory custom of admission quotas for females, I appeal: shall we not, in earnest, follow the world’s lead?
Explore our Minding the World column for insights on higher education worldwide, offering news, op-eds, and analysis.
[1]Kunitake, Yuto. “Affirmative Action in Japanese Higher Education: A Critical Examination of DEI Implementation.” Social Sciences & Humanities Open 11 (2025): 101312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2025.101312.
[2]Kunitake, Yuto. “Implications of SFFA v. Harvard for Japan: Affirmative Action and DEI in STEM Fields.” Journal of JSEE 73, no. 2 (2025): 2_2–2_6. Published online March 20, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4307/jsee.73.2_2.
Image: “Nara Institute of Science and Technology Japan-UC Davis Thermodynamic Challenge” by UC Davis College of Engineering on Flickr
Because several commenters have raised doubts, I would like to respond.
Is the statement that “female quotas are illegal in the United States and the EU” actually correct?
United States
Title IX does allow affirmative action when one sex’s participation is “substantially limited.”
However, that does not mean that quotas are automatically permissible. In my article I explicitly distinguish ordinary affirmative-action measures from fixed, rigid quotas.
Turning to case law, there are indeed no U.S. precedents on female-only admission quotas apart from those involving women’s colleges. Yet ever since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), a leading scholarly view holds that the ban on quotas at the admissions stage extends to sex-based quotas as well (see, for example, Pieronek 2005). I myself first learned of this when a referee once reminded me that “Bakke’s prohibition on quotas influences doctrines beyond race.”
European Union
One commenter cites Directive 2006/54/EC, but that instrument is confined to “employment and occupation” and does not directly regulate selection systems that evaluate academic ability or aptitude, such as university admissions. Likewise, Directive 2004/113/EC expressly states in Article 3 (Scope) that “This Directive does not apply to the content of media and advertising nor to education,” thereby excluding education altogether. Consequently, at the level of EU law there is no provision that squarely endorses sex-based quotas—or even affirmative action—in university admissions.
At the level of individual Member States, tie-break preferences and sex-specific support programmes are generally lawful, yet admission quotas have been struck down as unconstitutional. A low representation of one sex may justify affirmative action, but it does not justify rigid quotas.
It is intriguing to see, in the article’s comment thread, instances of international standards being distorted to justify the Japanese case.
Reference
Pieronek, C. (2005). Title IX and gender equity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education: No longer an overlooked application of the law. Journal of College and University Law, 31(2), 291–350.
I am not being critical, and I can’t imagine writing an article about Japanese law — in
coherent Japanese. There are 51 states (actually 46 states, 4 commonwealths, and the District of Columbia’s municipal government acts as a state), the Federal court system (not to be confused with 51 state systems) and the US Dept of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, whose regional offices not only often disagree with each other but often defy the national headquarters in DC.
And then just because the law say something doesn’t mean that people actually will do it.
I should have included the 1982 Mississippi Institution for Nursing decision — the all-female state-supported university had to admit men to its nursing program because the state didn’t offer nursing to men, and that was a violation of the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/458/718
Nursing had traditionally been all-female and low paid — it, teaching, and secretarial were the three professions traditionally open to women. Salaries at least tripled in the early 80s when women could go into other fields, at which point men went into nursing — and Mississippi was a traditional state in the very deep South.
Then there was the 1996 VMI decision — Virginia (and South Carolina, the Citadel) had state military academies which were all male. Virginia addressed this by creating an arguably superior one for women at Mary Baldwin College. SCOTUS said no, the MBC one did not have the prestige of the VMI program, so VMI had to admit women.
Then there is the issue of physical fitness standards which are a percentage of the age and sex category, and not the same. See, for example, https://www.maine.gov/dps/msp/join/requirements — scroll down and note the lower standards for women.
Beyond that, “equal protection” is not affirmative action — it’s letting women (or men) into a program under the same standards and conditions as everyone else.
Affirmative Action (which some call Affirmative Retribution) is more than this — it’s lowering of standards, special supports (often scholarships or reduced price tuition), and other things to increase the target category.
Absent being as a remedy to past discrimination (e.g. VMI), Title IX explicitly prohibits this.
However, the OCR people who enforce Title IX have explicitly told me that they would NEVER read Title IX that way — that Title IX only prevents discrimination against women.
And then we have a SCOTUS Justice (Brown-Jackson) who can not tell us what a “woman” is. We have lesbians and we have women with peni and the two do not like each other, and that is getting interesting as well. See yesterday’s SCOTUS decision regarding Maine House Rep Laurel Libby.
The biggest beneficiary of Affirmative Retribution in the US has been upper-middle class White women. And the biggest problem with Affirmative Action for women is that it often is the boss’s daughter-in-law or niece who benefits. She’s not close to qualified but it’s not nepotism if it is Affirmative Action.
Again, I am not being critical — I am in the education field, in the US, and *I* can’t give a definitive answer.
” “Bakke’s prohibition on quotas influences doctrines beyond race.”
I’ve never heard that, and the three prior challenges to racial Affirmative Action intentionally involved females. Barbara Grutter, who challenged the UM law admissions, was a 43-year-old single mother, twenty years older than the average law student and “disadvantaged” because she was a single mother.
Affirmative Retribution for women really hasn’t been discussed, and should be.
The claim that “female quotas are illegal in the United States and the EU” is overstated.
In the United States, the Department of Education’s OCR Title IX guidance expressly allows limited, evidence-based affirmative action when one sex’s participation is “substantially limited.” Title IX targets permanent, fixed numerical set-asides, not remedial measures per se.
In the EU, the CJEU’s Marschall judgment (1997) held that women may be preferred when candidates are equally qualified, provided an individual override clause exists; Directive 2006/54/EC likewise endorses proportionate, time-bound positive action.
Japan’s STEM context meets these criteria. Women account for roughly 16 percent of entrants—an OECD low—so a temporary, purpose-specific women’s track is defensible even under US/EU standards.
The article’s assertion that women already outnumber men in higher education aggregates four-year universities with junior colleges. Disaggregated figures show male enrolment remains higher in universities, and the gender gap widens markedly in STEM.
Selection procedures are also more demanding than the piece suggests. At the Japan Civil Aviation College, the women’s track replaces the Mathematics III paper with TOEIC, SPI, aptitude tests and full medical screening. Other institutions require oral examinations in advanced mathematics and physics. Assessment has shifted from a single written exam to a broader, multi-modal evaluation; it is hardly “no-test” admission.
If female quotas are to be denounced as potentially unlawful, consistency requires equal scrutiny of male-only quotas—such as those recently adopted at Tokyo Kasei University. Targeting female quotas alone, while ignoring their male counterparts, raises its own equity concerns.
Tokyo Kasei University is not a competitive university to get in. No one cares.
Legality and ethics are independent of prestige. Whether a gender-specific quota is unlawful discrimination is judged by the policy itself, not by the university’s ranking.
Thank you for your thoughtful points. A few clarifications may help us see where we agree and where we part company.
1 United States
Title IX and affirmative action. Title IX guidance does indeed permit evidence-based measures when one sex’s participation is “substantially limited.” But this does not amount to blanket approval of fixed numerical set-asides. My article explicitly separates flexible, time-bound affirmative action from rigid quotas.
Quotas after Bakke. With the narrow exception of women’s-college cases, U.S. courts have never confronted a female-only admissions quota. Even so, since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) the prevailing scholarly view is that the constitutional ban on admissions quotas applies to sex as well as race (see Pieronek 2005). A reviewer once reminded me that “Bakke’s prohibition on quotas influences doctrines beyond race”—a comment I have never forgotten.
2 European Union
Scope of the directives. Directive 2006/54/EC regulates employment and occupation; it does not govern academic selection procedures. Directive 2004/113/EC goes further: Article 3 expressly excludes “education” from its scope. At EU level, therefore, there is no legal basis that squarely endorses sex-based quotas—or even positive action—in university admissions.
Member-state practice. Many Member States allow tie-break preferences or sex-specific support programmes, yet constitutional courts have struck down hard quotas in admissions. A low female share may justify some affirmative action, but it has not been accepted as justification for rigid quotas.
3 Japanese data and asymmetries
Enrolment rates. The figures I cite follow Japan’s Ministry of Education definition of “higher education.” If we restrict the lens to four-year universities, male enrolment is still (narrowly) higher, but males are also more likely to enter the labour market straight from high school.
Sectoral imbalances. While women remain under-represented in STEM, men are vastly under-represented in nursing and certain welfare faculties. Yet there is no move to create male-only quotas in those fields.
4 Procedural concerns
Japan Civil Aviation College is among the nation’s most selective institutions. Substituting its rigorous paper with general aptitude tests has already unsettled both aviation professionals and the broader public.
5 Male-only quotas are not a cure-all
The recent establishment of men’s quotas at less-selective universities—where admission is already relatively easy—does nothing to resolve the structural issues raised by women-only quotas in highly competitive STEM tracks. Were a top-tier institution such as the Institute of Science Tokyo to introduce a men’s quota in its nursing programme, we would indeed face an entirely new, and fascinating, debate.
Reference
Pieronek, C. (2005). Title IX and gender equity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education: No longer an overlooked application of the law. Journal of College and University Law, 31(2), 291–350.
“With the narrow exception of women’s-college cases, U.S. courts have never confronted a female-only admissions quota”
Do not get confused between public (i.e. run by a government entity, e.g. a state) and private.
The Mississippi Institute for Women and Virginia Military Institute decisions were because they were public, run by the states of MI & VA.
Massachusetts law permits single-sex college on the undergrad level only (because at the time there were no female schools offering grad programs). That’s why all-female Smith College’s grad Social Work program has to accept men.
A lot of once all-male colleges have now become majority-female. That happened to Amherst College a while back, alumni freaked, and they are now careful to keep it close to 50/50.
My bad — MI is Michigan, MS is Mississippi except for boats where it is Massachusetts and Mississippi is US.
I should add that the 14th Amendment applied the first 10 Amendments (the “Bill of Rights”) to the states and thus to public universities. Sort of.
The difference thus is that in a public university, the student’s relationship with the university is that of a citizen and the government. But in a private one, it is that of customer and corporation/business. Students in public IHEs have constitutional rights, students in private IHEs have contractual rights.
Of course this isn’t exactly true either, but let’s not go into the weeds….
Women outnumber men in all but STEM doctorates.
Women outnumber men in medicine and law.
Women outnumber men in 4 year undergrad programs 60/40 if not more.
Women graduate at a higher rate.
The anti-male bias of OCR is one of the reasons I wrote this:
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/01/15/clean-out-ed-office-for-civil-rights/
Dr. Ed’s information is very interesting and helpful.
Japan’s higher-education system continues to display marked gender imbalances, especially in science disciplines (rigaku). The White Paper on Gender Equality 2024 reports that women account for just 27.9 % of undergraduates in science, 23.4 % of master’s students, and 20.9 % of doctoral candidates (Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office [GEBCO], 2024). These shares have risen by only ≈3 percentage points over the past decade, underscoring the slow pace of change.
In professional tracks such as law and medicine, women likewise remain in the minority. The 2018 probe into Tokyo Medical University revealed that several medical schools had systematically reduced female applicants’ entrance-exam scores; subsequent reforms have produced only modest gains. Latest figures show that female pass rates in FY 2024 medical-faculty admissions still trail those of men (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology [MEXT], 2025).
Internationally, Japan continues to lag behind other advanced economies. While women represent 31.7 % of master’s and 34.6 % of doctoral students across all fields, their share in science remains stuck below 30 % (GEBCO, 2024). Structural barriers—including cultural expectations, occupational segmentation, and limited mentoring—impede women’s progression into high-status research careers.
Projecting forward, a linear gain of +3 pp per decade would require roughly 73 years to reach gender parity (50 %) in science disciplines. Incrementalism alone is thus inadequate. Time-bound targeted measures—such as calibrated gender quotas, structured mentoring, and transparent admissions audits—are essential to dismantle systemic barriers and foster equitable access to science education and careers in Japan.
⸻
References
Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office. (2024). White Paper on Gender Equality 2024 [Danjo Kyōdō Sankaku Hakusho, Reiwa 6]. https://www.gender.go.jp/about_danjo/whitepaper/r06/zentai/html/honpen/b1_s04_00.html
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. (2025). Male and Female Pass Rates in Medical Faculty Entrance Examinations (FY 2024 Admissions) [Igakubu Igakuka no Nyūgakusha Senbatsu ni okeru Danjo-betsu Gōkakuritsu ni tsuite]. https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/senbatsu/1409128.htm
“Although women’s higher‑education enrollment rate already exceeds that of men, only “women in STEM” receive relief through the extreme measure of quotas.”
I’d love to see quotas in my field (Education) where programs that are over 90% female are common. But the other side of affirmative retribution is that competence matters, and there are two plane crashes this spring where the female pilot made mistakes. The Helicopter/Plane one in Washington DC involved a female pilot being at the wrong altitude and on the wrong side of the river and the one in Canada involved the female pilot cutting power when she shouldn’t have and landing on her right landing gear with three times the force of gravity which caused it to collapse, and the plane then to roll.
” Yet, to the best of my knowledge, quotas of this kind in university admissions are illegal sex discrimination in advanced economies such as the United States and the EU. Even before the 2023 SFFA v. Harvard decision, both the 1978 UC v. Bakke ruling and Title IX of 1972 made admission quotas for females unlawful.”
Not really, and I need to qualify this with “to the best of my knowledge” as well, but (other than what the Trump Admin may do, there is nothing prohibiting admissions quotas for female students in US IHEs today. I know that the Japanese legal system is different from ours, and this is complicated. So let me explain why:
US Constitution is written in 1787 and ratified in 1789 — it created a federal republic of what quickly became 14 mostly-sovereign states. (Vermont became a state in 1791, it had been claimed by both NH & NY, with both states issuing deeds to the same pieces of land.) Someone then sued a state in Federal court, which was viewed as an affront to state sovereignty, and hence the 11th Amendment (to the Constitution) was passed to prevent that. (But for the 12th Amendment, Kamala Harris would be Vice President today, but I digress…)
US Civil War — to end slavery — is 1861-65 and there are three amendments from this. The 13th banned slavery, the 14th made the former slaves citizens, and the 15th gave them the right to vote. The 14th has “due process of law” and “equal protection of the laws” and applies it to the states, essentially bypassing the 11th Amendment.
There is the 1964 Civil Rights Act which bans racial discrimination. There is the 1965 Higher Ed Act which says that institutions which receive Federal funds can not discriminate on the basis of race. The Higher Ed Act was the source of all the Federal Financial Aid money, it was reauthorized in 1972 with Title 9 prohibiting sex discrimination.
It reads: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Baake involved a specific number of med school seats being reserved for minorities with a Patrick Chavis being admitted with lower scores than Alan Baake had. The backstory on this is that Chavis’ medical license would be revoked for “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician.” See: https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion/the-tragic-life-and-death-of-a-poster-boy/
The Baake case involved race, not sex, and it basically said that there could be “goals” but not specific quotas. This would get rehashed for over 40 years, with the two Bollinger decisions in 2003, and the Fisher decision in 2016 until we finally got the SFFA decisions which finally outlawed *racial* discrimination in admissions.
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been either a court challenge or OCR ruling related to quotas for female students.
Title IX (i.e. Title 9) has largely been used to expand women’s athletics in both high schools and colleges. While the clear text of the law states that sex discrimination, it’s never been enforced — that I know of.