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.

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. 

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. 

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).

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.

We have agreed on the following initiatives.

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