Sojitz Corporation (“Sojitz”) has been named a “Nadeshiko Brand 2022” company, a designation that recognizes Sojitz as a listed enterprise for its exceptional work to promote the success of women in the workplace. This year marks the seventh consecutive year Sojitz has received this designation, and the first year of being selected following changes to the award’s selection criteria.*

Sojitz has defined its vision for 2030 as a general trading company that constantly cultivates new businesses and human capital. Sojitz seeks to increase corporate value as part of its management strategy by continuing to pursue value creation that responds to market needs and social issues, and Sojitz’s human resources strategy aims to assemble a team of diverse, autonomous individuals. The company has established three strategic pillars on human capital— leveraging diversity, encouraging ambition, and facilitating tangible growth.

Sojitz positions the promotion of women in the workplace as one of the most important goals under its human resources strategy. Diversity is the source for innovation and leads to greater competitiveness. Sojitz aims to increase the percentage of female employees to approximately 50% during the 2030s and has set human resource KPIs as quantitative targets to be achieved. As a result, Sojitz will create a leadership pipeline with women at each career stage, support female employees in acquiring experience to realize their career objectives and close the gender gap for experience. Sojitz is also implementing measures to support women through life events and promote employee retention and engagement.


Promoting Women in the Workplace – A Message from President Masayoshi Fujimoto
As president, I believe that promoting women is key to furthering Sojitz’s growth as a company. I have continued to reiterate this view through internal and external messaging. In my own personal experience, I have worked overseas on assignment for a total of 16 years in countries such as the U.S., Poland, and Venezuela. In all of these countries, promoting women was common practice, and I witnessed the importance of empowering and promoting women to compete with companies overseas. From FY2016 onwards, Sojitz has increased the number of female employees hired. After assuming the role of president, I have raised the number of female career-track employees hired to over 30%. With the assistant-track employees included, the number of female employees exceeds 45% for all new-graduate hires. As a result of continuing to hire excellent talent, 47% of all employees in their 20s are now women. While hiring more women is becoming the norm at Sojitz, we are also committed to continuing to implement systems and measures to support working women and retain valuable female employees. Sojitz has set the goal of raising its ratio of female employees to around 50% by the 2030s. In order to achieve this goal, we will continue our hiring and development programs while ensuring there are flexible systems in place that are easily accessible to support employees. Moving forward, Sojitz will continue to build an environment in which women can naturally excel over the mid- to long-term.


By promoting women, Sojitz has continued to reflect diverse opinions and perspectives in its management decision making, enter new business fields, and accelerate DX implementation and other initiatives for business creation. Sojitz strives to have all employees, regardless of gender, age, or stage of life (childbirth, childcare), fully exercise their knowledge, skills, and experience to become a source of sustainable growth for the company and realize value creation.

・Sojitz’s Human Resource KPIs for Promoting Women

Human Resource KPI	FY2020	FY2021	FY2022 (expected)	FY2023 (Target)
Percentage of Female Section Managers	8.6%	9.1%	Over 10%	Greater than or equal to 10%
Percentage of Female Career-track Employees with Secondment Experience in Japan or Overseas	19%	34%	Over 40%	40%
Percentage of Female New Graduate Hires (Career-track Employees)	32%	44%	Over 33%	Maintain greater than or equal to 30%
Percentage of Employees Taking Childcare Leave (Percent of male employees in parentheses)	68% (56%)	87% (83%)	Over 95% (Over 95%)	100%

・Sojitz’s initiatives to promote women in the workplace

* More information on changes made to the selection criteria for the Nadeshiko Brand (METI website) 


[For questions regarding this press release, contact:]
Sojitz Corporation Public Relations Department　+81－3－6871－3404