Japan’s parliament on Tuesday elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister, ending a three-month power struggle after disastrous election losses in July for the governing Liberal Democratic Party.

Takaichi, 64, replaces Shigeru Ishiba, who lasted just a year as prime minister.

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The struggling LDP joined the country’s right-wing Japan Innovation Party to form the fragile alliance enabling Takaichi’s election.

Takaichi still lacks a majority in both houses of parliament, throwing prospects for a successful premiership into doubt from the outset.

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Japan has had four prime ministers in the last five years.

While Takaichi breaks a glass ceiling for women in Japan as the country’s first female head of government, she is well known for her hostility to women’s rights, gender equality, and diversity.

Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage, separate surnames for married couples, and female succession for Japan’s imperial family.

While Japan has made slow but steady progress in the fight for marriage equality over the last decade, those gains are likely to stop while Takaichi is in office.

Serving as former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Minister of State for Economic Security in 2023, Takaichi strayed from his support for an “LGBT Awareness Promotion Bill” in Parliament, saying “there are still points at issue.”

While she said at the time, “There should be no prejudice against sexual orientation or gender identity,” Takaichi registered her opposition to the same bill in her run for the LDP presidential election in 2021, claiming the legislation’s definition of discrimination was vague.

Takaichi is well known for her hardline views on immigration and foreign policy. She’s paid several visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war criminals are interred, a provocative act in the eyes of China and other victims of Japan’s wartime aggression. She’s also promoted revisiting Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Known as the “Iron Lady” among conservative supporters in Japan familiar with her admiration for right-wing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi gained prominence before her political career as a presenter and anchor for TV Asahi and Fuji Television.

In her first term as a member of Parliament in 1994, Takaichi wrote a controversial article recommending a book titled Hitler’s Election Strategy, which stated, “Voters you cannot persuade should be eliminated.” After a political backlash, the book was pulled from shelves.

Takaichi moved to the United States in 1987 to work as a congressional fellow in the office of Democratic Rep. Patricia Schroeder (CO). The same year, Schroeder launched and then abandoned a run for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.

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