Women’s Sport

Women’s Sport as Politics in Muslim Contexts

....Why can't girls - Muslim or not - play sport because they enjoy it...
....Firstly, I agree with you that in an ideal world women/girls should engage in sport because they enjoy it. However sport is a social institution and reflects the values and injustices of a given society – sport is no exception to this. Indeed, in all societies women’s access to sport has been limited often on the grounds of modesty, if not religion and even science. If you look at the history and struggles of European and North American women to gain access to sport and Olympic participation, you see that sport is much more embroiled in sexual politics than we would like to believe. The book I am editing for Women Living Under Muslim Laws, to which we have invited you to contribute, deals with the diverse obstacles that prevent women from engaging in sport. These obstacles are neither coincidental nor isolated; rather they are aspects of a systemic and orchestrated attempt to prevent women from sport and athletics by opponents who recognize that sport is one of many arenas in which changes to gendered practices will lead to other social changes, and to women’s Women’s Sport as Politics in Muslim Contexts demands for other rights that will challenge male privilege...