The goal for such a forum is to expose employees to other women's plights in trying to get ahead and learn from their experiences as women executives in a male dominated field.
In his opening speech at the forum, Otsuka Pharmaceutical's President, Representative Director, Taro Iwamoto, Ph.D., said, "As president, what I have aimed at for the past five years to promote what we call "creativity from this corner to that corner," and not to copy other pharmaceutical companies.
The most important part of this concept is to employ people who continually innovate. Our company employs competitive staff in Asia and in the West for our overseas operations. There are much less gender barriers and our key elements of evaluation is innovation." Dr. Iwamoto stated that the company goal is to increase the ratio of female executives to 50% by 2020.