Momoko Nojo, a 22-year-old student activist from Japan, didn’t know what’s coming for her when she launched an online campaign against former Tokyo Olympics President Yoshiro Mori for his sexist remarks.

In just two weeks, Nojo’s #DontBeSilent social media campaign, which she launched in collaboration with other activists, gained over 150,000 signatures and drew global attention to what’s going on at one of the world’s most prestigious sports events, as per a report by CNN.

The hashtag was coined as a fitting reply to Mori who said that women talk too much.

The result of this global criticism? Mori finally resigned last week and Seiko Hashimoto, a woman who has competed in seven Olympic Games, filled his gap.

“Few petitions have got 150,000 signatures before. I thought it was really great. People take this personally too, not seeing this as only Mori’s problem,” Nojo told CNN in an interview.

“It made me realise that this is a good opportunity to push for gender equality in Japan,” she said.

Nojo is a 4th-year economics student at Keio University in Tokyo. Her activism, she says, was born when she studied in Denmark for a year. 

In 2019, during her time in Denmark, Nojo founded “NO YOUTH NO JAPAN”, a non-profit organisation so that the youth of Japan could raise its voice in the country, where decisions tend to be made by a uniform group of like-minded people.

This week, Nojo called out a proposal by Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party to allow more women in meetings, but only as silent observers, as a poorly-executed PR stunt.

“I’m not sure if they have the willingness to fundamentally improve the gender issue,” she added.

Japan has currently ranked 121st out of 153 countries on the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Index and Nojo’s win against Tokyo Olympics former president is only a small step in a long fight.