She will be one of two directors on the board who do not hold an executive post in the company. Big Japanese companies are under pressure to diversify their top management to bolster governance, risk management and global perspective, having traditionally chosen board members and senior officers from male managers who spent their careers at the company. Honda, the first Japanese car maker to start assembling cars in the United States in 1982, sells about 80 percent of its vehicles overseas. But it has trailed rivals Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co in bringing both foreigners and women into the upper echelons of its Japan headquarters. In Japan, about 7 percent of Honda's employees and 0.7 percent of its managers are female, according to the gender equality bureau of Japan's Cabinet Office. Japanese Prime Mini ster Shinzo Abe last year called on all listed companies to have at least one woman among their senior executives.