As Mitsuko Tottori acknowledges, Japan still has a long way to go in elevating people like her to positions of chief executive. According to the sources, when Tottori was chosen to become the first female president and chief executive of Japan Airlines (JAL) in January, her career—which began almost 40 years ago when she joined the company as a flight attendant—was taken into consideration.
“Japan is still in a place of establishing the initial goal to increase female managers,” Tottori said in a press conference at the airline’s headquarters. “I hope that Japan will soon become a place where people are not surprised when a woman becomes a president. We do want to seriously increase the number of female managers and more than that, I think it’s important that women themselves want to be active, so I really hope to see more and more of them in the future.”
The advancement of a former flight attendant to a managerial role is quite rare. The prestigious University of Tokyo has produced seven of the 10 past presidents of JAL. Alternatively, Tottori studied at the two-year Kwassui Women’s Junior College in Nagasaki, one of a chain of institutions that has played a pivotal role in the promotion of women’s higher education.
Two of the reasons JAL gave for Tottori’s promotion to a senior position were her “high level of insight and field experience in safe flight operations and service throughout her career” and her “significant contribution to maintaining safe operations during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
By 2030, the government wants to see thirty percent of women in senior management positions at large publicly traded corporations.
