Japan Has Expanded Science and Engineering Female Quotas In 38 National and Public Universities, Including Kyoto University and Osaka University

Expanded "Female Quotas" at National University Science & Engineering Faculties to Reach Nearly Half of All Universities by 2026 Admissions; High School Student Approval Drops to 56%

"Female quotas" (designated slots for female applicants) in science and engineering faculties—a practice becoming firmly established in university entrance exams—are rapidly expanding across national universities as well. For the 2026 entrance examinations, seven institutions, including the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto University and the School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, have announced the introduction of these quotas. This means that 38 out of 81 national universities—nearly half—will have implemented female quotas.

Regarding the specific capacities being established at Kyoto University and Osaka University, Kyoto University’s Faculty of Science will recruit 15 students through its Comprehensive Selection (Sogo-gata Senbatsu), while its Faculty of Engineering will recruit 24 students through School Recommendation Selection (Gakko Suisen-gata Senbatsu). Osaka University’s School of Engineering Science will recruit a total of 20 students through School Recommendation Selection, with all of these slots operating independently of male applicants.

To increase the number of female students in science and engineering fields, national and public universities such as Kitami Institute of Technology, Institute of Science Tokyo, Kanazawa University, and Nagoya University have already established similar quotas. Since fiscal year 2022, the government has been providing financial assistance to universities that introduce female quotas into their entrance exams.

While these quotas have been drawing significant attention recently, Osamu Kondo, a chief researcher at Kawaijuku (a major prep school), notes that Nagoya Institute of Technology (NIT) was the first national university to ever create a female quota. This pioneering move began with the 1994 entrance examinations, where NIT introduced a special recommendation track for women within its Department of Mechanical Engineering (currently the Department of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering).

Following the lead of NIT—which has long shouldered the responsibility of fostering female engineers in the Chukyo industrial region, where manufacturing companies are heavily concentrated—"quite a few neighboring science and engineering universities in Nagoya now offer female quota entrance exams," Kondo says.

Since the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the employment of women in science and engineering fields has steadily expanded, and corporate Japan currently shows an incredibly high appetite for hiring female talent in STEM. In a proposal compiled by Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation) in 2024, the sectors explicitly targeted for proactive hiring included engineering, mathematics/data science/AI, and science, with more than 60% of companies stating they have a policy to expand the recruitment of female talent.

However, regarding public perception of these quotas, Kawaijuku conducted a survey targeting high school students in November 2024. The results revealed that the percentage of high schoolers who responded that they "approve of female quotas" had decreased by 9 percentage points compared to the previous survey (conducted in January 2023). While 64.7% of respondents expressed approval in the previous survey, that figure dropped to 56.0%. This highlights a growing trend: while the expansion of female quotas moves forward rapidly, support among high school students appears to be stagnating.