JEDDAH, 10 May 2008 — The players bound into the gym, shedding their long black cloaks and veils to take to the basketball court. Up this night: Jeddah United against the Jaguars, as 30 women spectators hoot and holler from the stands.
Such is the start of women’s sports in Saudi Arabia.
“One day we’re going to look back on such events and hopefully say, ‘Wow, we’ve gone a long way,’” said Lina Almaeena, the founder and team captain of Jeddah United, the team playing last week’s games. “Future generations won’t have to start from zero.”
In Saudi Arabia, many conservative adherents believe that women’s emancipation will lead to decadence and a dissipation of Islamic values. For them, keeping the sexes segregated and maintaining male guardianship over women is not enough. They want to ban anything that might — in their eyes — lead to more freedoms for women, such as sports.
Because of that, women’s leagues and physical education classes in many schools are banned and female athletes are not allowed to participate in the Olympics.
Despite such obstacles, women have quietly been forming soccer, basketball, volleyball and other teams throughout the Kingdom in the past few years. Some operate under schools and universities, others under the umbrella of charities. A few, like Jeddah United and the Jaguars, are independent.
The teams have none of the privileges that men’s leagues — which have existed here for decades — enjoy.
They are not part of the General Presidency of Youth Welfare, the federation that cares for sports. They find it hard to get corporate sponsorship. They don’t have proper facilities and courts where they can train, or even certified referees. And they are not allowed to compete in international competitions.
And while men’s games are broadcast on TV and take place in huge stadiums, women rarely advertise their games — or even talk openly about them. That makes it difficult for them to reach spectators from outside their immediate circle of friends and family. And teams in one city often do not know whether teams in other cities exist.
In March, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh told Okaz newspaper he had ordered a university in the capital, Riyadh, to cancel a women’s marathon. Last year, conservatives stopped a women’s soccer game in the Eastern Province from taking place.
Abdul Kareem Al-Khodair, a professor at Riyadh’s Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University, wrote on Al-Muslim website that introducing physical education classes for girls at government schools would be tantamount to “following in the devil’s footsteps.”
That attitude toward sports is one reason why the rate of obesity among Saudi women is higher than men’s, health care officials say. About 52 percent of Saudi men and 66 percent of women are either obese or overweight, according to Saudi press reports.
The women playing basketball on a recent night are conscious of the controversies.
Lina Almaeena, 29, stressed that her efforts to promote sports are aimed mainly at combating “social ills,” such as obesity, osteoporosis and depression, and providing healthy alternatives for women who spend their time shopping and smoking waterpipes.
“We look at it as part of our national duty. It is not just for getting into the Olympics or competing in international games,” she said before the game started.
Did she worry about the game being canceled?
“The key is to have publicity later,” she said. “It’s also a matter of luck, but you’re more likely to get lucky in Jeddah compared to other places.”
One of the toughest things for the women teams is finding coaches, said Lina Abuzinada, board member in charge of the sports center at the First Women’s Welfare Society, which fields its own team. They’re rare and expensive, she said.
The society, which cares for 36 female orphans, was the venue for last week’s game. The players bounced into the center around dusk, dressed in long, loose shorts reaching to the knee and jerseys underneath their flowing abayas.
No men were allowed into the society’s club. The players had trained in courts they rent at gyms, or in those attached to private homes. Before playing, the women shed the cloaks, safely because no men were around. Jamila Antone, the Jaguars’ American coach, compared the game to amateurs’ leagues playing against each other in the United States — even though the two Saudi teams are among Jeddah’s Top 4. “If the girls had facilities like boys do for all sports, they will do better than the boys,” said Antone.
Norah Ashrur, a 22-year-old special education teacher, watched as her team members, dressed in Jeddah United’s uniform colors of raspberry, white and gray colors, played.
“It bothers me that nobody cares,” said Ashrur, who lived in Fort Collins, Colo., from the age of 7 to 12. “In the US everybody would be there.” But because of segregation rules, not even her dad could come to the game.
At the end, the Jaguars — whose colors are blue, yellow and gray — won.
Lina Abuzinada insists that the situation of Saudi female athletes will change for the better. “Doing things step by step is better than doing it in one step,” she said.
“But we need to speed it up,” Lina Almaeena interjected.
