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Promotion of Women's Empowerment

Women's Empowerment

Basic Policy, Target, and Achievement

Furukawa Electric Group believes that it is particularly important to ensure diversity in employees involved in decision-making as a foundation for corporate growth, and has set the share of women in managerial positions as a sustainability indicator in the 25th Mid-Term Management Plan, and promote efforts to achieve it. We consider the small absolute number of female employees to be our greatest challenge and diligently work to maintain and strengthen human resources in all phases, from recruitment to the development and promotion of employees in managerial positions. At the same time, we work to improve the corporate culture and company-wide work environment by leadership reform, strengthening feedback, providing flexible work styles, and supporting for autonomic career formation so that female employees and their supervisors can think about their promotion positively.

Initiatives

Initiatives for female employees

  • Career development support (e.g., coaching for managers and management candidates)

  • Support for individual development of female management candidates (creation of development plans in departments)
  • Held networking events among female employees
  • Support for female employees who have taken maternity leave to return to work
  • Held in-house events 
  • Dispatched employees to programs outside the Group

Topics Cross-industrial business leadership session 

The cross-industrial business leadership session 2023 was held face to face at Furukawa Electric in FY2023 with the aim of encouraging women working in companies to continue to work lively and flexibly and play a key role in succeeding in business. Approximately 70 female mid-career employees from 13 companies, including our own, participated in the event, that is, keynote speech, networking lunch, panel discussion, and group work. 

Initiatives of Group Companies

Support for Student’s Career Choices in Science and Engineering 

As a manufacturer, one of Furukawa Electric's major missions is to ensure that technology is passed on to the future. We also consider the development of female engineers to be important from the perspective of diversity. We can expect new innovations from a variety of ideas created by bringing together a diverse group of people. However, the share of female researchers and engineers in science and engineering fields in Japan is still low, and we see this as an issue that must be resolved in order to strengthen our human resources. To this end, we are engaged in activities to broaden the career choices of female students to science and engineering occupations. 

Riko-challe

Furukawa Electric agreed and held "Science and Engineering Challenge", as known as "Riko-challe”, an initiative led by the Gender Equality Bureau of the Cabinet Office, and has been holding corporate experience events since FY2022. We invited junior high and high school students to the Furukawa Electric headquarters for a company introduction, a tour of the company, a technical experience program, and a panel discussion with our senior employees in FY 2023. Approximately 20 junior high and high school students and their parents participated in the two days event this year (male students are also allowed to participate, and up to one parent per student may attend).

Dispatch of lecturers for "Science Worker Lectures" for high school students

We dispatch two of our female technical employees to a girl's high school in Kanagawa Prefecture to give a lecture to freshmen every year. Two of them were sent in FY2023 to speak about the work of technical employees in a company, their daily schedules, and their career choices. The students actively asked them about employment and other topics.

Participation in Initiatives

We have agreed on the following initiatives.

External Evaluation

We have received the following evaluations for our efforts for the promotion of women’s empowerment.

  • Selection of the MSCI Japan Empowering Women Index (WIN)
  • Selection of The "Nadeshiko Brand" of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
  • Certification of The ”Eruboshi", an excellent company based on the Act on the Promotion of Female Participation and Career Advancement
  • "Kurumin" certification from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as a Company Cultivating the Next Generation
  • Certification of D&I Award

Data

DFF Inc., サステナビリティ推進室, 組織開発課