Osaka Mayor suggests men to go shopping as women take more time, gets slammed

Mayor of Japan's third-largest city, Osaka faced a public backlash after he made what people termed as a “sexist” remark. Ichiro Matsui reportedly said that men should go for grocery shopping amid the COVID-19 pandemic as women take more time contributing to the spread of the virus. Japan has been under ‘state of emergency' since April 7. 

Matsui was addressing a press conference in Osaka when he said that women take a longer time in grocery shopping because they browse through different products and weigh out which option was the best. In comparison, "men quickly grab what they're told to buy so they won't linger at the supermarket -that avoids close contact with others." 

The comment soon attracted flak from the online community. Japanese Journalist Shoko Egawa took to Twitter to write "People who know nothing about daily life shouldn't make comments." 

'Male-dominated society' 

Despite women accounting of 51 % of the total population, Japan remains a largely male-dominated society. The country is ranked 110 out of 149 countries in the World Economic Forum's (WEF) latest global gender gap index. The country also ranks bottom among the G7 countries for gender equality, despite Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pledge to empower working women through a policy called "womenomics." 

This comes as Japan has reported 12,368 positive cases of COVID-19 and 328 fatalities. A total of 1,494 have recovered and there were about 259  serious cases.

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Meanwhile, Japan's emergency medicine organisations said emergency medical care in the nation has begun to collapse, with many hospitals turning away patients who have fever or other symptoms indicative of Coronavirus and putting excessive burden on the limited number of critical emergency centers.

The Japanese Association of Acute Medicine and the Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine held an online news briefing and representatives called for increased testing to facilitate the transfer of patients to appropriate medical facilities so that emergency rooms would be able to treat patients in critical condition for causes other than the coronavirus.

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Image: AP