Ms. Kyoko Hokugo is the Director of the Gender Mainstreaming Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. She is in charge of diplomacy regarding gender equality and women’s empowerment, including organizing WAW! (World Assembly for Women), annual international symposium hosted by Japanese Government.

She obtained her B.A. from Kyoto University and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1995. She graduated from Ecole National d’Administration (France) in 1998.

At the Ministry, she was formerly in charge of trade negotiations in the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and with the EU for Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement when she was Counsellor of Japanese Mission in Geneva from 2010 to 2013 and Japanese Embassy in Belgium from 2013 to 2016. Before that, she worked for Japanese policy toward United Nations, G8 Summit, Japan-Africa relationships and so on.

She is mother of a son.