I’ve been an electrical engineer for over 30 years and I do think progress has been made. There are many programs available for middle school and high school girls to get them exposed to and interested in engineering.
I would agree that it isn’t a very family-friendly occupation and it is more challenging to be a working mom than many other fields. But lots of us have been successful at it and I think it is getting easier and better all the time. The infrastructure that exists for before/after school childcare has improved dramatically since I had young kids.
I agree that Japan is horrible for women engineers, actually for most any career for women. The rest of Asia is a different story. I lived and worked in China from 2008-2011 and had many women engineers working for me. They were all smart and hardworking but they had a lot of support that made being a working mom much easier - domestic help is cheap and readily available and many of them had grandparents living with them taking care of their child. Singapore is similar with plenty of female engineers - almost all of them go back to work after having children but then some leave the workforce when their kids are older to help with their schoolwork (kind of the opposite of what many women do here in the US staying home with babies but then going back to work when kids are in school).
Change is slow to come but things are so much better for women now than when I started out that I think it will only continue to improve.