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STORY: Being a woman in Japan's male-dominated politics is a struggle Karen Makishima knows too well.

In this Sunday's snap elections, she's the only female candidate running for Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party in her 20-seat prefecture.

Between campaign activities in the coastal constituency of Odawara, she says politicians like her have to constantly fight traditional, sexist perceptions.

"The biggest drawback of having a low number of female legislators is that it doesn't change traditional perceptions that have long been criticized, that women are not suited to politics or that politics is for men."

A record fifth of all election candidates this month are women.

But Japan still has one of the widest gender gaps among lawmakers in the democratic world.

Just 10 percent of its lower-house lawmakers are women.

That compares to an average of 30 percent in other G7 nations.

Still, Makishima won her seat by a large margin in 2021 and remains hopeful for broader change.

“I think there has been a long-standing perception that we need candidates and politicians who are focused on politics 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with very little room for other opinions for a very long time. However, we are embracing more different views on what politics should be like, so the candidates are also becoming more diverse. I think we are in such a transitional period."

Japan has set a goal to have women to take up 35 percent of lower house seats by 2025.

It's a target the LDP and other parties will likely fail to hit.

In Sunday's polls, only 16 percent of the LDP's candidates are women.

Last year, the LDP promised to boost its own female representation in the lower house to 30 percent by 2033.

Critics such as former defense chief Tomomi Inada say the party needs more concrete measures - like a gender quota system.

A week after newly-anointed Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba unveiled a new cabinet with only two women...

Inada and other female lawmakers wrote to LDP leadership, saying the low number of women in parliament 'distorts democracy itself'.

Emma Dalton is a senior lecturer at Australia’s La Trobe University who studies gender inequality in Japan.

She blames the LDP's dominance ever since the end of the second World War.

“Although the LDP is, you know, because it's been in power so long, it's become this whole beast of its own. It's a catch-all political party, but it does represent a certain sector of the population. And that is an elite strata of men from certain families, from certain universities. There's no diversity, very little diversity in that political party. So I think, and lots of people have pointed this out, I'm not the only one saying it, that the LDP's dominance is really key to why there are so few women in politics. And they're dominant, not just at the national level.”

In an emailed response to Reuters questions', the LDP said it has no plans to implement measures like a gender quota.

It also says it has 'limited scope' to add female candidates in the election because many of its seats were held by incumbents.

A government report in 2021 also highlighted other issues women in politics face: gender stereotypes, difficulties balancing other commitments such as raising children, and harassment.

In a 2020-21 survey of more than 5,000 of Japan's local lawmakers nearly 60 percent of female respondents said they had suffered harassment from the public or colleagues versus a third of those who identified as male.