Start United States USA — Japan Report: Hashimoto will be offered job to head Tokyo Olympics

Report: Hashimoto will be offered job to head Tokyo Olympics

332
0
TEILEN

TOKYO (AP) — The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee is about to get a new president — and it looks like it will be a woman. According to a report in Japan…
TOKYO (AP) — The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee is about to get a new president — and it looks like it will be a woman. According to a report in Japan, the job will be offered to 56-year-old Olympic Minister Seiko Hashimoto. Hashimoto, who could be named this week, would replace Yoshiro Mori, who was forced to resign last week after he made demeaning comments about women. He said, essentially, that women talk too much. Japan’s Kyodo news agency, citing a unnamed person “familiar with the matter,” said a selection committee will ask Hashimoto to take the job. The committee, headed by 85-year-old Fujio Mitarai of the camera company Canon, was scheduled to meet again on Thursday. Hashimoto won a bronze medal in speedskating at the 1992 Albertville Olympics. She also competed in cycling in the Summer Olympics. Naming a woman could be breakthrough in Japan, where females are under-represented in boardrooms and in politics. Japan ranks 121st out of 153 countries on the World Economic Forum’s annual gender equality ranking. Mori, a former Japanese prime minister, offered the job last week to 84-year-old Saburo Kawabuchi, a former head of the country’s soccer federation. But reports of the behind-closed-door deal were widely criticized by social media, on Japanese talk shows, and in newspaper reports.

Continue reading...