Nintendo, founded in 1889, is perhaps the longest running gaming company around and, perhaps due to this fact, it has largely remained a boys’ club. This began to change for the better in 2020, when it nominated its first woman to the board of directors. Since then, the company has vowed to hire more women, who make up a paltry 4.2 percent of managers across Nintendo’s Japanese offices. Now, it is once again trying to upend the status quo by nominating another three women to its board this year.
According to GameFile, Nintendo announced its intention to nominate the three women to its board of directors within a financial report published earlier this week. The women in question are Miyoko Demay, Eiko Osawa, and Keiko Akashi, and the proposal of their nomination must be approved at a later shareholder meeting in June.
Demay comes to Nintendo as an “outside director” from her time at Tiffany & Co. Japan, where she oversaw the company as its president for a time. Osawa and Akashi are set to join specifically as members of Nintendo’s audit and supervisory committee, and have long histories as tax accountants.
Upon the approval of their nomination, the three would join Asa Shinkawa, a corporate attorney who joined Nintendo back in 2020 after “at least five years of external advocacy.”Their addition to the 10-person board (which breaks down to six veteran Nintendo board members and four outside directors, including Shinkawa) would represent the single biggest shift in the makeup of the company’s managerial ranks.
In other Nintendo news, the company revealed that it will finally unveil the successor to the Nintendo Switch within the current fiscal year, but it isn’t exactly rushing to talk about it. A Direct in June will specifically only outline the rest of the current Switch’s 2024 lineup, at which point Nintendo may finally switch gears and start getting ready to announce the Switch 2, or whatever they decide to call it.
