Tokyo 2020 Olympics chief Yoshiro Mori will step down after sexist remarks he made about women were leaked to Japanese media last week, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported Thursday, citing sources.
Mori said at a meeting of the Olympic board of trustees last week that “board meetings with more women take longer” because “women are competing – if one member raises her hand to speak, others may think they too need to speak,” he reported in Japanese newspapers.
“If you want to increase women’s membership, you will be in trouble unless you set a time limit or deadline in place,” he reportedly added.
Stepping Down
Speaking at a press conference the next day, the 83-year-old Japanese Ex- Prime Minister confirmed that he had made the remarks in private and said he was sorry for doing so.
CNN wanted to comment on Mori’s office, which did not return calls on Thursday because it was a national holiday in Japan. The Tokyo 2020 committee press office has told CNN that it will stop commenting on Mori for now.
Organizers of the games were due to hold a meeting of Council and Executive Council members in the Japanese capital on Friday to discuss the fallout from Mori’s remarks
Mori, head of the game’s organizing committee, had previously said he did not consider stepping down, but a continuing outburst of public outrage seemed to force him to leave the course.
Japanese women regularly face sexual harassment and gender inequalities. The gender gap in the country is “by far the largest among all advanced economies,” according to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Report. The report ranked Japan 121 out of 153 countries, in part due to the fact that women make up only 5.3% of board members in listed companies and only 10% of members of parliament, one of the lowest levels representing women in politics in the world.
Olympic Games To Be Held
The Olympic Organizing Committee will now find a new leader as it rushes to open the Games on July 23 in a country struggling to cope with the growing number of coronavirus cases. The Summer Olympics and the Paralympics were delayed last year due to the Covid-19, with experts saying it may not be possible to postpone the event again.
Japanese leaders have vowed to hold the Games, despite growing public opposition and rising costs. A survey conducted last month by national broadcaster NHK found that 77% of people in Japan thought the Games should be canceled or continued to be postponed, largely because of obstacles of hosting such a major event in the middle of a public health crisis.
The country’s healthcare system is in a state of disarray, even though it has the largest number of hospital beds per person in the developed world. Cases have more than doubled in the past two months to more than 406,000, stretching Japan’s medical system to the brink.
As of February 4, more than 8,700 people who tested positive for Covid-19 were waiting for a hospital bed or space at an isolation center in 10 prefectures. The week before, more than 18,000 people across 11 prefectures were waiting, according to the prefectures’ health ministries.
