For Saudi women, biggest challenge is getting to play

After the 18-year-old Saudi equestrian Dalma Malhas won a bronze medal in show jumping at the first Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in August, she was singled out for praise by Jacques Rogge, chairman of the International Olympic Committee, in a news conference at the Games’ conclusion.

“This is indeed the first time that a Saudi woman is participating in an international event,” let alone winning a medal, Rogge said of Olympic events. Dalma’s achievement, he said, had made the IOC ‘absolutely happy.’

The reaction in Dalma’s conservative Muslim homeland —where athletics for women are seen in some quarters as immodest, even immoral — has been far more complicated.

Physical activity of any kind is forbidden in Saudi Arabia’s state-run girls’ schools. Though gyms for women exist in major Saudi cities, they are usually unmarked, so that customers need not fear attracting attention.

Saudi Arabia does not permit women to represent it in international athletic competitions, and it is one of only three countries in the world that has yet to send women to the Olympic Games (the others are Qatar and Brunei). Though Saudi Arabia sent an official delegation of male athletes to Singapore for the Youth Olympics, Dalma — the daughter of an accomplished female show jumper, Arwa Mutabagani — had to enter on her own, at her own expense.

Now her bronze medal has placed her at the centre of a growing controversy in the kingdom about what kinds of athletic activity, if any, are acceptable for Saudi girls and women.

The laws and customs that govern Saudi women’s lives are among the most restrictive anywhere. Public separation of the sexes is stringent. Saudi women may not drive or vote and must wear floor-length cloaks known as abayas and head scarves whenever they leave home. They may not appear in court.

Yet, in recent years, women’s issues have become a major battleground for liberals and conservatives. Saudi traditions regarding the rights and treatment of women have rarely, if ever, been so much in dispute. The issue of Saudi women in sports is a manifestation of this larger debate.

On July 31, the Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmed, who directs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, started a campaign called ‘No Women. No Play’, urging the IOC to suspend Saudi Arabia from Olympic competition until it allowed female participation.

Ahmed likened the position of Saudi women today to that of blacks in apartheid-era South Africa and asked why the IOC had not suspended Saudi Arabia from the Games as it banned South Africa from 1964 through the end of apartheid in the early 1990s.

“Even more than political pressure, the expulsion of South Africa from the Olympics was one of the most effective tools for ending apartheid,” Ahmed said, without referring to the more prominent role accorded to sports overall in South African society, or whether an Olympic ban thus had greater effect than it might on Saudi Arabia.

“The freedom to practice sports and to exercise is such a very basic issue,” Ahmed said. “It has to do with physical health. I think that once Saudi women are free to practice sports, that will open up other areas of discussion about their rights.”

The Olympic Charter states that “the practice of sport is a human right” and that “any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement.”

IOC not to act

A spokeswoman for the IOC, Emmanuelle Moreau, suggested1 in an e-mail exchange that the IOC had no intention of formally censuring countries that did not allow women to participate in the Olympics. She said the organisation did not plan to give Saudi Arabia a deadline for women to participate, as it did with South Africa.
Outside Olympic teams, there have been signs of change for Saudi sportswomen. In major cities, a handful of private basketball and soccer teams for women have sprung up. In 2008, Arwa was made a board member of Saudi Arabia’s Equestrian Federation, the first such post for a woman in Saudi sports.

Saudi newspaper columnists have argued that relaxing the prohibitions against physical exercise might help to stem exploding levels of obesity and osteoporosis among Saudi women.

Lina al-Maeena, who in 2003 founded Jeddah United, a women’s basketball team that has since grown into a fully-fledged sports training and management company, agrees.

“You have very high rates of diabetes, obesity and osteoporosis for women, a very high rate of depression,” she said. “You have this conservative segment here that’s using religion to oppose women’s sports. But that’s a very invalid argument.”

She hopes that pressure from the IOC may help to break down the barriers to women’s athletic participation. “At the end of the day, the Olympic Charter does state that there shall be no discrimination based on gender, religion, or ethnicity. And Saudi Arabia is obviously not following the Olympic Charter.”

Liberal Saudis note that even Aisha, the young wife of the prophet Muhammed, is reported to have enjoyed footraces against her husband and that conservative Muslim societies like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have more open attitudes about women and sports.

Last year, the daily newspaper ‘Al-Riyadh’ reported that a survey of 2,250 Saudis found that a mere 4 per cent were opposed to gyms for girls and women.

But majority opinion counts for little in an absolute monarchy, where the king rules in concert with a Salafist religious establishment. Some of the most prominent clerics continue to oppose sports for women under all circumstances, arguing that sports will lead women to engage in behaviour like wearing immodest clothing or leaving their homes unnecessarily.

Other clerics argue that sports are absolutely off limits only for virgins, who could become unmarriageable if they were to damage their hymens through athletic activity. “Women should be housewives,” the Grand Mufti told the Saudi channel Al Eqtisadiah. “There is no need for them to engage in sports.”

Female Saudi athletes say they find it unproductive to debate views openly. “I don’t want to provoke people,” Arwa said. “The conservative side always says, ‘No, you should be at home. You shouldn’t be travelling, you shouldn’t be competing in public.”’

Arwa wears a veil when she is representing Saudi Arabia overseas and said she always tries to emphasise, in interviews, the less controversial aspects of women’s athletics, like the importance of exercise for health. “I try to respect our culture,” she said. “You don’t want to create a negative opinion of women in sport.”

Lina said that looking at women’s movements globally helped her stay optimistic.
“It’s not just in Saudi that sports for women are a political issue,” she said. “Up until 1972 with the Title 9, women in the US didn’t really get equal rights in sports. And that’s, what — three decades ago? And it’s a 250-year old country.

“We’re only a 78-year-old country,” she continued. “When you gauge yourself from the historical perspective, you see that the process Saudi Arabia is going through is a very normal process that all societies have gone through in relation to different fields of endeavour for women.”