news // no. 4 Tokyo 2020 CEO fired after saying sexist comments »An Olympic feminist change before Tokyo 2021 Jerrison Oracion Senior Columnist Oren I was going to go to Tokyo last summer for the Summer Olympic Games as well as to explore other places that I was not able to see when | went in 2018. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, it was delayed to this summer and I still might be able to go to it depending on what happens with the pandemic and travel restrictions. The delay of the games began a debate on whether it should still happen with spectators and was a major setback. Last month, the CEO of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee Yoshir6é Mori had to step down after saying comments that were deemed sexist during a meeting with the Japan Olympic Committee on February 3. When they were talking about putting more women in the committee, Mori (who was a former Prime Minister in Japan and the former head of the Japan Rugby Football Union) said that meetings that involve a lot of women take too long because they talk too much. The following day, he apologized for saying those comments, but many people asked him to step down because his comments do not represent the spirit of the games. This led to many female advocate groups calling on the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee to act on the CEO’s comments, and some volunteers for the games quit their positions in protest to the comments. Mori has said he theotherpress.ca does not agree with the criticism against him and that his comments were misinterpreted. “I didn’t mean it in that way, although it is said to be discrimination against women,” he said. “I have been praising women, promoting them to speak out more.” He claims his comments meant that women talk a lot in meetings because they have a “strong sense of competition.” Mori also says he is being unfairly judged for these comments because of his age. “Old people are also doing well for the sake of Japan and the world. I feel extremely unhappy that older people are said to be bad. But it may go nowhere if I complain.” One week later, Mori stepped down and it was likely that his deputy head Saburo Kawabuchi will take over the position but declined the offer because he has controversies of his own. The following week on February 18, former bronze medalist and the Minister of Olympics Seiko Hashimoto was selected to manage the organizing committee for the Tokyo Games. In an NHK News interview on February 25, Hashimoto says the challenges that she must address before the games are to ensure a safe environment during the games and the torch relay (which begins this month) for both the athletes and spectators. Also, she must prevent a cluster from being formed in the venues and celebration spaces. Last week, Hashimoto announced that more women will be put in the organizing committee's board of directors which now consists of 40 percent of the board. This was the goal that was discussed Photo of Seiko Hashimoto by T Nobue via Wikimedia Commons Countries led by women said to have less COVID-19 cases and deaths » Analyzing claims that woman run countries have dealt with pandemic better Jessica Berget Assistant Editor here is a saying: “The best man for the job isa woman.” Well, according to some recent studies this might be true. Many reports claim that countries led by female leaders have done better at handling the COVID-19 pandemic with fewer COVID related deaths, a smaller number of days of deaths, and a lower peak in daily deaths. A recent Bloomberg article from February 2021 cites studies that suggest countries like Germany, Taiwan, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, and Finland (all led by women) have dealt with the pandemic better. The report claims this is because of how fast they imposed self quarantine policies, increased testing, enforced mask wearing, or put their countries under lockdown. The authors of this study say they found that women showed more empathy and support for the welfare of their followers—and when people feel they are being taken care of, they are more likely to comply with social distancing measures and mask wearing. Another study called “Leading the Fight Against the Pandemic: Does Gender ‘Really’ Matter” by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum echoes these findings. The study claims that after analyzing 194 countries the difference of COVID deaths and cases is due to the “proactive and coordinated policy responses” that women took in response to the pandemic. The authors of the study compared some of these countries to “nearest neighbour” countries to use as a sample. For instance, countries all led by women like Germany, New Zealand, and Bangladesh were compared to countries led by males like England, Ireland, and Pakistan. Researchers of the previously mentioned study also says that female leaders were “risk adverse with regard to lives” which suggests they were also willing to take risks when it came to the economic sector of the pandemic. They go on to say which led to Mori stepping down from his job. that under the criteria “openness to travel,” countries run by females did have about the same COVID-19 cases but did have fewer deaths. Others say different, however. According to Leah C. Windsor, author of “Gender in the Time of COVID-19: Evaluating National Leadership and COVID-19 Fatalities,” she explains that her research shows no evidence that women- led countries fared better with COVID-19 than male-led countries. The study shows that countries with higher rates of egalitarianism do have lower rates of coronavirus-related deaths but suggests that this is not because of the gender of the country’s leader. “The perception that women world leaders have done better vis-a-vis COVID-19 cases and : | Photo by Billy Bui deaths largely comes from the fact that other researchers and the media have focused primarily on [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] OECD countries, whereas we looked at the entire global sample of countries,” Windsor says in PsyPost article. “The cases people tended to focus on were New Zealand and Iceland—two remote island nations with relatively small populations, where borders are easy to control.” Research from this study found that cultural morals and norms also have an affect on coronavirus cases and deaths, as Windsor adds “countries with more egalitarian cultures will rebound quicker and have less profound negative consequences—and many of these are led by women.”