Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAPAN JUN 2019 58 You can’t saywedon’t have the talent pool. What we don’t have is the culture that allows [women] tomove up at the same speed and frequency as their white male colleagues. Jan Jones Blackhurst was mayor of Las Vegas from 1991 to 1999 ジャン・ジョーンズ・ブラックハースト氏は1991年から1999年までラスベガス市長を務めた IN FOCUS but the problem is you need to have at least 30% either in management or on a board. Unless you have a group of women who feel like they are a little more equally represented in a boardroom and in a conversation they will tend to be quieter. But when they see there is 30% or 40% they tend to be very vocal. BB: When you look at this issue as it relates to Japan, what do you see? JJB: I see a huge opportunity. I read a report by Goldman Sachs on Shinzo Abe’s womenomics. Japan will say that 71% of women are in the workforce. That’s true, but the same problem you have in the United States and around the world exists here too – they are really all at lower levels. Getting to higher levels, they are almost invisible. But with the declining workforce, the most available talent pool as Japan moves forward are women, so I think IRs are a tremendous opportunity to really hire and promote women in the workforce. The report said that if you got to near equal representation it would create a 10% increase in the GDP of Japan. If you moved it to the OECD average for regular working hours it would be 15%. The numbers are huge. Just having equal pay in the United States would contribute an extra US$12 trillion in GDP. Around the world it would be US$38 trillion. It’s such bad business and old-time thinking to not find a way to solve this problem quickly. There is very little excuse other than being obtuse.