According to media reports in Japan, the local organising committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games are to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the sexist comments last week of President Yoshiro Mori.
He might have hoped that the crisis would blow over after issuing an apology but that has not been the case.
390 volunteers have resigned in protest and a petition calling on him to step down has now been signed by 142,000 individuals according to the Kyoto News.
He had made comments that women talk too much at meetings and if they are brought onto groups that measures restricting the time on contributions needed to be added.
Stupid, without a doubt. Damaging, certainly. Out of step with the way that any senior or even the most junior administrator should think never mind say, absolutely.
When you make a mistake and feel that simply saying sorry and moving on, it sets a tone that others can follow a similar behavioural path.
People who are genuinely committed to equality might occasionally slip and have comments taken out of context but never to the deep-rooted extent that Mori has been called out on.
It is still the case that sport is behind most other sectors in terms of giving equality of opportunity and leadership to the best person, regardless of gender.
There remains a persistent feeling that sport is unique, indeed, that every sport is unique and that in order to govern it you have to have played it and ‘come up through the ranks’.
When those ranks have been largely restricted up until more recent times, the pipeline of people who have climbed the ladder in a traditional way naturally takes time to become more diverse in the manner that society is.
Comments such as those made by Mori make it harder for those who want to lead to see a path towards doing so.
The International Olympic Committee said in a statement that “In the challenging context we live in, now more than ever, diversity is a fundamental value that we need to respect and draw strength from.”
“The recent comments of Tokyo 2020 President Mori were absolutely inappropriate and in contradiction to the IOC’s commitments and the reforms of its Olympic Agenda 2020.”
As a sporting gathering, the Olympics has long been to the fore in terms of equality. You can only introduce a new sport if there is a men’s and a woman’s competition, a point which probably delayed the return of rugby to the Olympic schedule.
The European Olympic movement last year adopted regulations on the gender balance that is required at National Committee level, a move prompted and shepherded through by the Olympic Federation of Ireland.
That was the right thing to do. Yoshiro Mori should understand what the right thing to do now is, and step down. Sometimes saying sorry just doesn’t cut it when you are in a leadership position.
Sport for Business Partners
