The Pakistani Women’s Cricket team might be quite anonymous back at home, particularly when compared with their male counterparts, but the girls stunningly stole the lime light after bagging a gold medal in the Asian Games being
held in Guangzhou, China. This was perhaps the first Asian Games gold Pakistan could manage to win in eight years. The spectacular performance of the Pakistani Women’s Cricket team not only displayed its ample talent before the world, it also highlighted the
fact that if more education and opportunities in sports are extended to them, they can certainly outperform their counterparts from more developed countries.
Nida Rashid, an all-rounder on the cricket team, while talking to the media, lamented the fact that the media back home does not give women’s sports as much coverage, as they do to men’s sports. She was quoted as saying “There
are so many sports in which women participate in Pakistan, like squash, table tennis and volleyball, but they go unnoticed”.
The Asian Games which are held in a manner similar to Olympic events draw athletes from a large number of countries which constitute two-third of the world’s population. This makes it a huge stage for many of its female participants.
In most parts of the Continent, women taking part in sports is often stigmatised as it does not go with the traditional gender roles prevailing in the region. Resultantly, the little available resources for coaching, trainings
and competitions are usually granted to the male athletes. In the case of Pakistan, the country had 25 female athletes in its contingent of 169, to participate in sports like Cricket, Judo, Shooting, Squash and Sailing.
Among the other Muslim countries participating, Iran had sent its women’s team to compete in kabaddi, and all wore head coverings in their opening match. They emphatically defeated Taiwan 62 - 18 on Monday.
Afghanistan, the war-torn Muslim country had 7 women in its 67-members delegation, all of whom were there to participate in the Martial Arts events.
In comparison, China, the hosting country known as the sporting powerhouse has heavily invested in developing elite athletes regardless of gender was represented by a completely female heavy contingent with 458 of its 507 team
members being women.
Pondering upon the issue of participation of women athletes into sports in Muslim countries, Basma Ahmad Essa, the Taekwondo athlete from the United Arab Emirates said: “There still needs to be more work toward educating females,
educating their families to make them feel that is it OK to represent their countries abroad. We are not disagreeing with any laws of Islam or things like that, that a lot of conservative people might put as obstacles in front of players.”
Essa, the 26-years old athlete was of the view that the lack of awareness about female participation in sports was also hampering their over-all development. However, the girl aired the hopes that the societies in Muslim countries
have started looking at the West and they are trying to copy their development models, this, according to her, would really help in brining a positive change for them.
An admiring sight was observed in Guangzhou where females with traditional Muslim head coverings represented their respective countries and gave the message that religious obligations could perfectly co-exist with sports.
Maryam Ahmed Al-Suweidi, a member of the Qatari Handball team, who constituted one of two female Arab teams in Guangzhou said that the world had developed and it was time for women to take their place.
Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, the President of the Olympic Council of Asia shared with the media personnel that 80 percent of the West Asian Olympic Committees had females participating in Guangzhou. He further told that for
many of those athletes it was the first time in an open environment. The President believed that in time this would improve even more and that the current level of participation was quite encouraging.
Tags: