TOKYO – Organizers of the Tokyo Olympics, already facing rising costs and significant public opposition to this summer’s Games, faced a new furor on Wednesday after the chairman of the Tokyo organizing committee suggested that women talk too much at meetings.
The president, Yoshiro Mori, provoked a negative reaction on social media after news of his comments surfaced humiliating women during an executive meeting of the Japanese Olympic Committee that was held online.
“In councils with many women, council meetings take a long time,” said Mori, 83, laughing, according to a report by Asahi Shimbun, one of the country’s largest daily newspapers. “Women have a strong sense of competition. If one person raises his hand, others probably think, I also need to say something. That’s why everyone talks. “
Mori, a former prime minister, was responding to a question asking him to comment on the Olympic Committee’s plan to increase the number of women on the council to more than 40% of the total.
“It is necessary to regulate the speaking time to a certain extent,” said Mori. “Or else we will never be able to finish.”
The reports were released at a time when Olympic organizers were issuing guidelines to reassure citizens and visitors that they could ensure the safety of athletes and others during the rescheduled Games this summer.
On Twitter, users quickly started calling Mori resign. Others suggested that Mori’s age and outdated attitude was the real problem.
Mori, who has often been the public face of the Tokyo organizing committee for insisting that the Games must continue in the midst of a global pandemic, seemed to make an exception for women who are currently members of the Tokyo organizing committee. These women, he suggested, are able to speak an extension that meets their standards of brevity.
These women “have experienced international arenas,” he said. “That’s why their conversation is sophisticated, it gets to the point and they are very useful.”
With just over five months to go before the Games, on July 23, Tokyo remains in a state of emergency and vaccination of the public has not yet begun. Mori and the committee face many challenges to persuade an audience that has repeatedly demonstrated that it strongly opposes Japan hosting the Games this summer. In a poll last month, 77 percent of the country was in favor of canceling or postponing the Games.
Masa Takaya, a spokeswoman for the Tokyo organizing committee, said she had no comment on Mori’s comments on women.
On social media, amid calls for Mori’s resignation, others expressed dismay not only at his comments, but because no one at the meeting had objected at the time.
“This is nothing more than discrimination against women”, I wrote a Twitter user. “He must resign immediately. But the problem is that no one stopped him. The biggest news is that he said this in the official place of the JOC meeting, where the reporters were present, and that no one prevented discrimination ”.