Female women of the opposite gender

It is true that there are more women working in game development in Japan than there are in Europe or America. I guess this may have something to do with the fact that games are more of an accepted phenomenon in society than in the West, where, often with good cause, it is still the prerogative of the teenage male or the young adult male professional.
That said, sexual equality seems to have passed by Japan without making much of an impression. Women still face work floor discrimination, sexual harassment, unequal pay and a very low glass ceiling on the career ladder. Women are often regarded as temporary workers until they get married and become housewives and mothers for the rest of their lives, so why invest time and money in them? It would seem that a lot of women seem to foster this view, many of them on the look out for a financially attractive husband to willingly drag them away from their working lives. This makes it all the harder for those women intent on building a career for themselves.

The games industry isn't quite as stale and old-fashioned as many other businesses and is often quite more relaxed in certain areas where, say, a financial institution would enforce the traditions of business. Apart from the usual roles in which one would expect to find women, like administration, PR and HR, you will often find many women in actual development. Though programmers are still rare, but not unheard of, many women fill the roles of designers (artists), planners (designers) and producers or APs. The sight of a woman on the work floor doesn't result in a geek-testosterone fuelled embarassment of faffing about as seems the case in a lot of Western development houses. They are as accepted a part of the project as anyone else.
In more business oriented roles they are often still not taken seriously. Imagine a female manager meeting with clients only for them to address all their comments and queries to her male assistant. It happens.

I have not yet met any female foreigners working in development other than localisation. I have had the pleasure of working with many female Japanese developers and I can honestly say that such a mixed company does nothing for the overall geek levels of a group. But then, women can get away with carrying Pokemon handbags, whereas it means instant death for someone like me.

All in all Japan can teach the West a lot about attracting female developers, in the same way the West has a lot to teach Japan about sexual politics.