Tokyo Olympics chief Yoshiro Mori resigned from his post on Friday after leaked sexist comments he made surfaced last week.
Mori reportedly said, “Board meetings with lots of women take longer” because “women are competitive — if one member raises their hand to speak, others might think they need to talk too.” He added, “If you want to increase female membership, you would be in trouble unless you put time limits in place.”
“The important thing is that the Olympic Games are held in July,” Mori said of his decision to step down. “If I am going to be a distraction to organizing the Games by being in my position, I think that is a situation we should avoid.”
The 83-year-old former Japanese Prime Minister confirmed he made the comments and apologized.
“I actually worked a lot to allow the women to voice out,” he said. “I appointed the women to give them an opportunity to state what they wanted to state. I have no intention of neglecting women at all.”
The Olympics will need a new chief before commencement this summer. It is unclear if the leadership void would delay the new start date.
Additional questions have been raised about whether the Olympic Games will continue to move forward as scheduled amid a surge of coronavirus cases in the country. Mori assured the public in early February that the global competition will proceed “regardless” of the COVID-19 extent.
“We will hold the Olympics, regardless of how the coronavirus (situation) looks,” Mori said. “We must consider new ways of hosting the Olympics.”
In mid-January, roughly 80% of those polled in two surveys throughout Japan indicated the Olympics, which are scheduled to run from July 23 to Aug. 8, should be canceled or pushed back or said they were doubtful the international competition would take place. Last March, organizers rescheduled the global event to 2021 in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic after the games were initially slated to begin in July 2020.
Japan has accrued 412,125 positives cases of the virus since the onset of the pandemic, with 6,800 deaths attributed to the virus.
