The woman who brought down an Olympics boss

When a Japanese college student named Momoko Nojo launched an online campaign against the powerful Tokyo 2020 Olympics chief following his sexist remarks, she wasn't sure it would get very far.

But in less than two weeks, her #DontBeSilent petition with other activists garnered more than 150,000 signatures against Yoshiro Mori.

The octogenarian former prime minister had said that women talk too much.

And last week, Mori quit and has since been replaced by Seiko Hashimoto, a woman, who has competed in seven Olympic Games.

"I don't think Japan is a country where there are many people that want to discriminate women. I think there are some, but that's not the reason why Japan is behind in gender equality. It's because people don't speak up when there's an issue. Even if the issue is raised, it gets wishy-washy and doesn't get solved, so Japan has not been able to change."

Nojo's activism is the latest example of women outside mainstream politics working to bring social change in Japan - where gender discrimination, pay gaps and stereotyping are rampant.

She said her work was partly motivated by sexist comments from male peers at her university - such as "you have to go to a high school that has pretty school uniforms” or “even if you don’t have a job after graduating, you can be a housewife."

Nojo's non-profit,"NO YOUTH NO JAPAN" was born in 2019 while she was studying in Denmark.

It was there, she says, that she realized how much Japanese politics was dominated by older men.

"In terms of policies, the fundamental problem is that Japan's policies are based on a stereotypical view that women need to raise children or take care of the elderly. I think it will be difficult to add more female executives if this doesn't change."

Nojo is dismissing a proposal this week by Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party to allow more women in meetings - but only as silent observers - as a poorly-executed PR stunt.

Japan is ranked 121st out of 153 countries on the World Economic Forum's 2020 Global Gender Gap Index - the worst ranking among advanced countries.

It scored especially badly on women's economic participation and political empowerment.