By Kantaro Komiya

TOKYO (Reuters) -In her campaign to become Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi made a bold promise to narrow the country’s wide gender gap in politics and lift the number of women in cabinet to a par with socially progressive Nordic countries.

Now that she has shattered the glass ceiling to be chosen leader of the ruling party on Saturday – setting her on course to emulate her hero Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female premier – Takaichi must try to deliver on promises her party has struggled to keep.

“The emergence of a single female leader alone may not drastically improve women’s standing in politics,” said Tohko Tanaka, a gender studies professor at the University of Tokyo, noting it was 26 years after Thatcher’s premiership before Britain had i

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