Opinion | From Kamala Harris to Kim Ng, women have smashed glass ceilings in the past year, but old barriers remain

Name: Tokyo Olympics: Women in Japan dance for female rights after Games chief’s sexism row
Uploaded: 2021-03-07T22:15:16.000Z
Duration: 1 min 50 s
Description: Tokyo Olympics: Women in Japan dance for female rights after Games chief’s sexism row

On International Women’s Day, there are plenty of groundbreaking achievements to celebrate

However, women have been disproportionately negatively affected by pandemic-related disruptions and need more than a pat on the back to thrive

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Then US Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris waves to supporters at a rally in Florida on October 31, 2020. Harris went on to become the country’s first female vice-president. Photo: Reuters

Alice Wu

Published: 6:15am, 8 Mar 2021Updated: 11:06am, 8 Mar 2021

For this year’s International Women’s Day, we have a lot of groundbreaking achievements by women around the world to celebrate.

Kamala Harris made history by becoming the first black, first South Asian American and first woman to be elected vice-president of the United States. Kim Ng became the first woman and first female Asian-American general manager in Major League Baseball’s 151-year history, and the first woman named to a general manager position by any professional men’s sports team in the North American leagues.

Estonia not only got its first female prime minister, now both its prime minister and president are women. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the first African and first woman ever to be the director general of the World Trade Organization. And joining the list of groundbreaking women is Chloe Zhao, the first Asian woman and the second-ever woman to win best director at the Golden Globes, almost four decades after Barbra Streisand’s win in 1983.

We also got to celebrate some sweet justice this year, when Seiko Hashimoto became the new head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organising Committee after her predecessor, Yoshiro Mori, resigned for making derogatory remarks about women. A former Japanese prime minister, Mori told the Japanese Olympic Committee that meetings attended by too many women tended to “drag on” because they “talked too much”, adding, “I heard someone say that if we are to increase the number of female board members, we have to regulate speaking time to some extent, or else we’ll never be able to finish.”

Mori is the one who talked too much. Given that Japan ranks among the lowest in the world when it comes to female political empowerment, Hashimoto heading its Olympics organising committee is a big development, and was a long time coming.

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Tokyo Olympics: Women in Japan dance for female rights after Games chief’s sexism row

In today’s coronavirus-ravaged world, we also need to recognise the many women superheroes who have been on the front lines of our fight against the pandemic, including the health care workers who are predominantly women. And women have had domestic responsibilities and other work to deal with from home, compounded by the impact of school closures.