IMF Conference

BOJ-IMF Conference: Gender Diversity in the Workplace as a Key to Economic Growth

April 15, 2024, Tokyo, Japan

April 15, 2024

An aging and declining population continues to pose a major macroeconomic challenge for Japan, putting a drag on potential growth and a risk to fiscal sustainability. Making the workplace more diverse and allowing further female participation could help increase labor productivity and boost potential growth. The Bank of Japan and the IMF Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (OAP) co-organized a conference entitled “Gender Diversity in the Workplace as a Key to Economic Growth” to bring together experts from Japan and overseas to offer their insights into some of the challenges faced in women’s labor force participation and employment in Japan, share own experiences, and shed light on how to further improve gender diversity in the workplace.

Agenda:

Keynote Speaker:

Sagiri Kitao is Professor of Economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), and Senior Fellow (Specially Appointed) at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI). She has worked at various institutions including Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the University of Southern California, City University of New York, University of Tokyo before assuming her current position. Her research area is macroeconomics of households and she analyzes the effects of economic policies such as taxes and social insurance system, using macroeconomic models that incorporate heterogeneous individual and household behaviors. She holds a Master of Public Administration/International Development from Harvard University and a PhD in Economics from New York University.

Panelists:

Tanja Jääskeläinen is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Finland to Japan since September 2022. Previously she served as Deputy Director General at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs covering global political and security issues and international organizations. She also served earlier as Senior Advisor to the Foreign Minister. 
Ms Jääskeläinen has also experience from the Middle East and North Africa having served as Special Representative to Syria Crisis, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Finland to Tunisia and Libya (2013-2017) and previously as Deputy Head of Mission in Damascus. She also worked twice in Europe, at the Embassy in Budapest and as Minister and Deputy Head of Mission in London. She entered the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1995. 

Lorie K. Logan is the 14th President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and represents the Eleventh Federal Reserve District on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in the formulation of U.S. monetary policy and oversees the 1,200 employees of the Dallas Fed. Logan previously was manager of the System Open Market Account for the FOMC and an executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that role, she managed the Federal Reserve’s securities portfolio as it grew to more than $8 trillion and led the implementation of monetary policy as directed by the FOMC. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Davidson College and a master's degree in public administration from Columbia University.

Tokiko Shimizu has served as Assistant Governor since July 2020, and is in charge of the Bank’s international affairs. Since joining the Bank in 1987, she has accumulated experience mainly in the fields of financial markets and prudence policy. She was appointed to her first senior position as Head of the Foreign Exchange Division of the Financial Markets Department in 2006, and has held several senior positions including Principal Examiner of the Financial System and Bank Examination Department. She also served as General Manager for Europe, Takamatsu Branch and Nagoya Branch. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in urban engineering at the University of Tokyo in 1987 and her Master’s degree in International Policy Studies at Stanford University in 1994.

Moderator:

Anne Oeking is an Advisor to the Director at the International Monetary Fund’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, based in Tokyo. Previously, she worked in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, the IMF’s Finance Department, and spent two years at the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office in Singapore. Ms. Oeking holds a PhD in economics from the Ruhr Graduate School in Economics, Germany. Her research focuses on international macroeconomics, international trade and finance, and labor markets.