{"id":18495,"date":"2024-08-02T18:35:25","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T16:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=18495"},"modified":"2026-10-09T00:56:59","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:56:59","slug":"olympiad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/olympiad\/","title":{"rendered":"Marginalisation of Women in Sport: A Lesson from the Paris Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Physiological and hormonal changes that are understood by all women, young women and doctors, and we refrain from mentioning the details in accordance with our Egyptian customs and traditions, and to preserve the player’s rights and psychological well-being.” With these words, the Egyptian Boxing Federation explained the exclusion of the first Egyptian female player to qualify for the Olympics in the history of the individual sport. However, these words revealed a lack of consideration for biological sex in the Egyptian sports sector, and the absence of equal opportunities and equality between male and female players.<\/p>\n

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The crisis began when the organising committee for the boxing competitions at the Olympic Games excluded Yomna Ayad<\/a>, a player on Egypt’s national team and the first Egyptian female participant in boxing in Olympic history, from the under-54-kilogram competition, because she failed to pass the weigh-in for this weight after exceeding the required limit by about 700 grams, exiting at the round of 32 against Uzbekistan’s Nigina Uktamova.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The federation’s handling of the player’s crisis disappointed Egyptians. At first, the federation disowned the crisis and announced that she was responsible, because, according to it, her weight was ideal the night before the match, and so any increase is the player’s responsibility, as it means not following instructions. It then issued a statement about the physiological and hormonal changes that the federation was too embarrassed to call “menstruation”.<\/p>\n

The statement caused feminist anger, first over the federation’s treatment of “menstruation” as a stigma for women that should not be mentioned, and second over its treatment of Yomna without any consideration for her biological difference, and its incompetence in dealing with her needs, according to a statement by the feminist initiative “Super Woman<\/a>“, which considered that the statement points to the committee ignoring the gross negligence the player was subjected to, in failing to prepare a diet that suits her and takes into account her nature as a female, for which the medical staff, not the player, is directly responsible, and demanded an immediate apology to the player.<\/p>\n

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From the Start<\/h3>\n

“Rarely is there a female assistant in any academy to support girls.” This is how Mahmoud Ashraf<\/strong>, owner of the “Aco” swimming training academy, explains the crisis of the failure to take women’s biological difference into account in sports, especially individual ones such as swimming.<\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3<\/strong>: “Women’s role in academies is limited to jobs as administrative assistants responsible for collecting subscriptions and coordinating between the academy and the club, or training children under five, or women who learn swimming for recreation rather than to take part in competitions. But having a training assistant for girls is something most private swimming academies, or even clubs, do not know.”<\/p>\n

He adds: “Girls usually stop training when they reach the age of menstruation, as parents think it is not permissible for them to wear a swimsuit, and their goal is not for their daughters to take part in competitions and reach the Olympics, but only to exercise and learn to swim, which means academies do not count on them much to compete in local competitions.”<\/p>\n

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Two years ago, several local swimming competitions were held in the coastal city of Alexandria, and to ease the burden on parents, Ashraf held a camp for the players in a summer apartment, collecting the cost of rent and living for a week from the parents. However, this camp did not include the girls from his academy who took part in the same competitions, because there was no female assistant, and the girls had to travel with their families, which he considered natural because he cannot bear responsibility for the girls or meet their needs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to Ashraf, he learned not to rely on girls in the academy after pinning his hopes on a girl who was achieving good times. However, he was surprised to see her mother at training with her younger brother, which made him ask why the player was absent. Her mother explained that she would not be able to go into the swimming pool, and he understood from what she said that the girl was going through her first period. Within two months, the girl had stopped training completely.<\/p>\n

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Special Procedures<\/h3>\n

For her part, Sahar El-Hawary<\/strong>, Egypt’s first female referee and the founder of Egyptian women’s football, says that during her work at the Egyptian Football Association, and in line with what she learned at FIFA, she made sure there was a female assistant to the team doctor. Before any camp or match, the assistant meets with the team and prepares a special schedule of their menstrual cycles and passes it to the doctor, as well as the nutritionist, to take the necessary measures, whether in the girls’ nutrition or in the training and rest schedule, as girls are not allowed to train in camp on the first and second days of their period, or it is postponed under medical supervision when necessary, such as for important matches.<\/p>\n

El-Hawary adds that she worked this way for two reasons: first, her exposure to international experiences at FIFA, and second, being a woman who understands the specific biological nature of female players. As for the other federations, the presence of women in them is rare, and a man cannot be expected to understand this nature.<\/p>\n

She points out that the crisis is not only about menstruation but also about marriage, pregnancy and childbirth. For example, at the international federation, female referees are allowed to leave the international list for a year during pregnancy, because the federation’s rules do not allow them to referee or play the game itself during pregnancy because of its danger, and at the same time the referee’s place on the international list is kept until her return. But for female players, although they are allowed to return, a player rarely returns to play again, either because the club dispenses with her and does not renew her contract, or because the family refuses.<\/p>\n

What El-Hawary pointed out regarding pregnancy brought up another Olympic incident, that of the player Nada Hafez<\/a>, who was eliminated in the round of 16 of the sabre fencing competition and faced a storm of criticism after announcing that she had competed at the Olympics while seven months pregnant.<\/p>\n

Although Nada is not the first player to take part in the Olympics in this condition, as a number of players preceded her, and although the sport’s international federation does not prevent pregnant players from taking part, social media flared up over her participation, which some considered a form of corruption, saying it would have been better to send another player who could compete for a medal, even though the facts indicate that she took part through continental results that qualified her, not through nomination by the sport’s Egyptian national federation. However, the way social media handled it reopened the discussion about the participation of sportswomen who have gone through pregnancy, while international newspapers celebrated the Egyptian player and considered what she did brave and a unique case in the history of the Olympic Games.<\/p>\n

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A Class Crisis<\/h3>\n

On the other hand, sports journalist and critic Mohamed El-Bermy<\/strong> says that the crisis in individual sports is not about gender but is purely about class, as he sees that those running individual sports do not provide support to the player, who bears everything, from nutrition and its follow-up to training.<\/p>\n

El-Bermy describes the sports federations for individual sports as “federations that are poor in terms of funding”, so the injustice inflicted on players affects both women and men, and usually only those who can afford the financial cost of continuous training outside the club, special nutrition programmes and the fees for nutrition follow-up continue in them. He adds: “After the player reaches the level of international competitions and wins medals, only then can we say that the federation can support the player, and even so the support is not at the required level.”<\/p>\n

The sports critic points to the case of the player Nada Hafez, saying: “If we take Nada as an example, she needed training outside the club, and a nutrition programme and medical follow-up that were most likely not available to her at the federation before she reached the national team.”<\/p>\n

He stresses that most married female players decide to postpone pregnancy for a while in order to keep competing, an example being the player Basant Hemida (an Egyptian sprinter who holds records in the 100 and 200 metres), who is married to her coach; however, she decided to postpone pregnancy for a while. He points out that female players decide to postpone pregnancy before the Olympics, or try to get pregnant right after the Olympics, because there is a three-year window for physical rehabilitation to return to the sport, except when there are continental championships that qualify for the Olympics, in which case the decision is to postpone pregnancy.<\/p>\n

El-Bermy explains that federations and clubs have no programmes to rehabilitate female players after they return from pregnancy and childbirth, unlike foreign federations, so female players returning to play after childbirth is rare in Egypt, and depends on the player’s own circumstances, whether financial, her own will, or her husband obstructing or supporting her.<\/p>\n

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What El-Bermy said about the individual-sport federations echoes what former boxer Ali Essam<\/a> said in a video on his Facebook page: that Yomna had nothing to do with her exclusion, pointing out that her coach prevented her from drinking water for three days before the competitions, and that the problem lay in the scale she had with her, because it was a “poultry and goods” scale and not a scale for people, so it was not accurate. He pointed out that the federation disowned responsibility with the phrase “physiological changes”, and that the federation did not provide the player with a nutritionist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Commenting, Entissar El-Saeed<\/strong>, head of the board of trustees of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, says that the statements of the coach and the Egyptian Boxing Federation shocked her, because Yomna Ayad is historically the first female player to reach the Olympics in the history of Egyptian boxing, and the statements showed that the federation and the coach were surprised that “Yomna is a female player who gets her period, which shows the lack of understanding by the Boxing Federation, and other sports federations, of the biological nature of women, and of gender.”<\/p>\n

She adds in her conversation with Zawia3<\/strong> that women have multiple social roles, including an important biological role, which is pregnancy and childbirth, but they cannot live their normal lives while practising sport in Egypt unless they give up their role as players. She continues: “This appeared clearly in the crisis of Nada Hafez, who was pursued by a state of societal guardianship, as she was attacked on the pretext of corruption at times, and of protecting the foetus at other times, even though she is not the first, and even though the rules of the sport and the federation do not prevent pregnant women from taking part. But it is rare at the Egyptian level.”<\/p>\n

El-Saeed calls for setting policies on gender issues in the sports sector, in a way that guarantees women’s effective participation in sport, without stumbling over biological nature or having to give up their biological role for the sake of the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yomna Ayad’s exclusion from the Paris Olympics exposes the disregard for biological sex and the discrimination against women in Egyptian sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[390],"tags":[19657,19661,19660,19658,19659,19655,19662,19663,19656,19654],"kateb":[863],"class_list":["post-18495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-egyptian-boxing-federation","tag-female-athletes-and-pregnancy","tag-gender-discrimination-in-sport-egypt","tag-menstruation-and-female-athletes","tag-nada-hafez-pregnant-fencer","tag-paris-2024-olympics","tag-sahar-el-hawary","tag-sports-federations-egypt","tag-women-in-egyptian-sport","tag-yomna-ayad","kateb-nadia-ibrahim"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/\u0623\u0648\u0644\u0645\u0628\u064a\u0627\u062f-\u0628\u0627\u0631\u064a\u0633-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18496,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18495\/revisions\/18496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18495"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=18495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}