Madame Miyoko Sano’s Introduction Speech for the Garden Reception

17 September 2014

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First, let me warmly welcome you and wish you all a lovely evening. I hope you enjoyed the beautiful sunset. I am so grateful that you all could come tonight, and I sincerely appreciate the presence of Mr. Michael Møller, Acting Secretary General of the Conference of Disarmament and Ms. Mihaela Racovita, who is an Associate Researcher for the Small Arms Survey.

Tonight, we celebrate an official side-event of the “World Assembly for Women.”　

This is the very reason why I am speaking to you instead of my husband. An important event called the ‘World Assembly for Women’ was hosted by Japan last week in Tokyo.　It was an international symposium focusing on women. One hundred prominent business, political and opinion leaders in various fields from 24 countries and 6 international organizations gathered in Tokyo, including Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, and Caroline Kennedy, the US Ambassador to Japan.

The week before and after the ‘World Assembly for Women’ have been declared as the “Shine Weeks” to raise awareness about the importance of women and to generate a movement for “A Society Where Women Shine”. Prime Minister Abe has been saying that it is vital for Japan to integrate one of Japan’s most under-utilized resources – the skills, talent and drive of “its women." And he pledged at the United Nations exactly one year ago to create “A Society where women shine” and this “World Assembly for Women” is one step forward to making this pledge a reality.

The symposium discussed promoting actives roles of women in the economy, such as how to increase the number of women in top management, create more productive and flexible work styles, support women’s businesses and solve the problem of childcare and so on. It also discussed global issues, such as ensuring the fundamental rights of education and health for women across the globe. Prime Minister Abe has already set a goal of increasing the number of women in leadership roles to 30% by 2020. In fact, recently he picked five female ministers for his cabinet, sending the strongest message about his commitment to revitalize society by promoting women to leadership roles. Also he is determined to make the 21^st century a world of where there is no human violation against women. So Japan has increased its contribution to UN women fivefold over the past year. And the good news is that a UN Women’s Office is going to be opened in Japan. Prime Minister Abe also pledged at the UN General Assembly last year that. Japan is going to give assistance in excess of 3 billion US dollars over the following 3 years to those that place women at the centre and 1.8 billion US dollars in assistance has already been implemented. More than 100 events related to this symposium have been and will be held throughout Japan as well in over 20 foreign countries.

As a matter of fact, I was raised in a conservative family. My mother used to tell me that if I go on to graduate school or become a career woman I would not have a happy marriage. She believed that the happiness of a woman is to get married before the age of 25 and have children. In Japan we had the word “eternal career” for women, which meant getting married. At that time, male and females at the workplace were not treated equally in Japan. So I got married as soon as I graduated from college and became a diplomat’s wife. I then served in several countries and moved 17 times to follow my husband. Since I could not work for a certain company I ended up becoming a freelance simultaneous interpreter. I worked on an on- and -off basis. After translating an international best-selling English book about self-enlightenment into Japanese, I now have a lot of opportunities to lecture all over Japan and I am happy to have my own career. Now, it is wonderful to see that more women are shining as lawyers, doctors, professors, diplomats and so on. Empowered women will empower men, children and the whole world.

Finally I would like to focus on the disarmament field. Women are important actors for disarmament and they should play more vital roles in moving disarmament negotiations forward. Having said so, I would like to hand it over to Mr Michael Moller, Acting Secretary General of the CD. Thank you very much indeed