By Nisha Onta
With the World Cup Football round the corner with its usual media hype and amazing corporate endorsements, everyone is getting really excited towards the sports event that is regarded by many as one of the world religions. But where are the women?
As other world religions, the role of women has been subdued and actually invisible. European travel agencies are actually offering football packages for the girlfriends and wives of football lovers during the time when their significant others would be glued to TV or even lucky enough to be in Germany to watch it live. Well the businesses are ready to capitalize on the socially constructed behavior of men and women, kudos to them. But when did major sporting events become men’s territory? (hmm, let me rephrase that, when will sporting events will stop being men’s territory?
Women are and always have been involved in sports but the view on women sports have not changed much. Women football matches do not get the same hype and endorsement as the men’s and in most developing countries women sports are not even organized. In Iran, women are not even allowed to be in the football stadium to watch the game.
World Cup 2006 Football Fever: Televisions being taken to different homes for the upcoming World Cup 2006 at New Road, Thursday, June 08 06. nepalnews.com
Recently the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, shocked everyone by suggesting that women should be allowed into the stadiums. But that decision was quickly overturned by the clergy in Iran who said it was un-Islamic for a woman to look at a strange man’s legs – even if she didn’t take pleasure from it. Another reason given by the clergy is that football stadiums are usually very rowdy and men are usually using profanities and women need to be protected from it– another protectionist justification for the submission of women.
“Recently the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, shocked everyone by suggesting that women should be allowed into the stadiums. But that decision was quickly overturned by the clergy in Iran who said it was un-Islamic for a woman to look at a strange man’s legs – even if she didn’t take pleasure from it.”
The issue of equality is more cross-cutting than we can imagine, from sports to poverty. There are many initiatives to increase women’s involvement in sports but just the number of women in the sporting events do not bring about change in the psyche of people who watch these sports.
There is a need for education and cultural shift to accept women in sports and hopefully in our lifetime, Sania Mirza — the sensational tennis player from India — would not have to worry about the length of her skirt while winning matches in major grand slams tournaments.
Onta is a post-graduate student in Gender And Development Program at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand. She also blogs at http://nishkandu.blogspot.com/
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