The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), in collaboration with the Tokyo Stock Exchange, commenced recruitment for "2025 Nadeshiko Brand" and "2025 Next Nadeshiko Work-Life Balance Support Companies" on August 25, 2025. This initiative, continuing since 2012 as a crucial policy for promoting women"s advancement, aims to introduce listed companies excelling in women"s advancement as attractive investment targets for investors emphasizing medium to long-term corporate value improvement.
Against the backdrop of increasing emphasis on human capital management, this year"s selection emphasizes not merely the volume of women"s advancement initiatives, but the effectiveness of promotion systems linked to management strategies and their actual impact on corporate value enhancement. Particularly noteworthy is the establishment of evaluation criteria that assess the twin approaches of "consistent career development support from recruitment to promotion" and "gender-neutral work-life balance support enabling dual-career families and shared parenting."
Significant improvements have been made to selection methods, expanding the maximum selection from 2 companies per industry (last year"s limit) to 3 companies for industries with 300 or more listed companies, enabling recognition of more pioneering companies. This change allows selection of approximately 30 "Nadeshiko Brand" companies and approximately 20 "Next Nadeshiko Work-Life Balance Support Companies."
The significance of this system lies in connecting two important trends: ESG investment expansion and diversity management promotion. By promoting disclosure of non-financial information related to women"s advancement and actively publishing participating companies" data to capital and labor markets, it aims to construct a transparent corporate evaluation system.
Additionally, establishing the new "Next Nadeshiko" category enables separate evaluation of companies particularly excelling in work style reform and gender-neutral work-life balance support, creating a mechanism for broadly recognizing diverse work style support initiatives. This is positioned as a crucial policy tool for achieving both gender equality and productivity improvement in Japan"s aging society with declining birthrate.
Recruitment runs from August 25, 2025, to October 16, 12:00 PM (strict deadline), with selected company announcements scheduled for late March 2026. An online information session about the system will be held on September 2. Through this system, investment promotion, acceleration of corporate initiatives, and overall improvement of diversity management levels across Japanese companies are anticipated.