On a crisp morning on Parliament Hill in Canada’s capital, I watched a group of schoolchildren pose for photographs in front of the Peace Tower. The teacher, their chaperone and the tour guide were all women. Nothing remarkable about that, I thought, especially in a country that prides itself on gender equality.

But during my stay here, I realized it was remarkable — for reasons I hadn’t expected.

I arrived in Ottawa with the assumption many outsiders share: that Canada represents a success story in gender equality while Japan, my home country, remains a cautionary tale of a society still catching up. What I found was more complicated.

© The Japan Times