The June 18 incident in which Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly member Ayaka Shiomura was verbally attacked with sexist heckling has underlined the need for women to take concrete action to end the discriminatory attitude in Japanese society against women by joining hands not only among themselves but also with men.
Following the incident, a petition criticizing the sexist hecklers and calling on the Liberal Democratic Party to strictly punish them was posted on change.org, the world's largest platform for petitions. The petition was written by an anonymous man in his late 20s.
On June 26, I and some other people who support the petition organized a workshop in the Diet members' office building, and more than 150 men and women from a variety of backgrounds, including students, business people and mothers with young babies, gathered to discuss the heckling incident and related issues.