Iwata’s full response on lack of female board members at Nintendo
One point summarized from Nintendo’s latest shareholders meeting related to the lack of female board members at Nintendo. We now have a full translation of Satoru Iwata’s reply. It’s been posted below.
In my understanding, your point is that because there are no female board members at Nintendo, whether there is something hindering the efforts of the female employees. Is that correct?
Well, first of all, Nintendo has many female employees, and among these people, many are actively working as administrators and managers. On the other hand, when we decide our board members, we choose the ones that can form the best possible management team to run Nintendo’s business for the fiscal year ahead. So it is just a coincidence that there are no female members on the current board; but this does not imply that we would not to select females for our board or that there is an atmosphere that female employees could never become board members.
Besides, Nintendo’s platforms have almost the same number of female users as male users, which is extremely rare in the gaming industry. In cases of other companies’ platforms, the user proportion between males and females is about 70:30, or something like 75%:25%. Although gaming was originally favored predominantly by males and it has long been said that games are for children and young male adults, the number of female users increased tremendously while the Nintendo DS and the Wii were expanding the gaming populations. However, if we fail to reflect females’ points of views sufficiently in all aspects in our business, including not only product development, creation and sales but also in the management that leads the company, I believe we will not be able to realize the products that will be well accepted by women in the market. Therefore, although we currently have no female board members, we would highly appreciate it if you could understand that there is nothing hindering female employees’ efforts.
