Although it’s been weeks since the Paris games came to an end and the global buzz has long since faded, conversations that overshadowed Egyptian female athletes’ achievements tell of social codes that have, and continue to, weigh down on women.
Egypt sent more female athletes to the Paris Olympics than ever before, a mark of slow but steady progress in the Arab country’s efforts to promote women in sports. But once at the games, they had to overcome yet another hurdle: conservative social mores back home.The number of female athletes competing with Egypt’s Olympic delegations has risen in recent years. Of the 149 Egyptian athletes who qualified for Paris, 52 were female. That’s up from 47 at Tokyo’s 2021 games and 37 at Rio de Janeiro in 2016. At Paris, Sara Amr Hosny was the youngest fencer, just 14. The oldest athlete in Egypt’s delegation was shooter Amira Abu Shoka, who made her Olympic debut at 45 years old.
Egypt’s female competitors have helped beef up Cairo’s medal count: Sara Samir took silver in weightlifting at Paris. Before that, Hedaya Malak earned a bronze in taekwondo in 2016 and 2020, and Sara Ahmed’s 2016 bronze in weightlifting made her the first Arab woman to win a medal for the sport.
The growing cast of world-class Olympians offers important role models for the Arab world’s most populous country. Still, their heroic feats – and tragic missteps – have also subjected them to harsh criticisms back home, where conservative culture stresses modest dress, gender roles are often kept traditional, and funding typically goes to male-dominated sports like football.
Take the case of Yomna Ayyad. At Paris, she was Egypt’s first-ever female boxer to qualify. Sadly, she was eliminated after weighing in 700 grams above her permitted 54-kilogram weight class. Egypt’s Olympic Committee said, somewhat cryptically, that the weight gain was due to “common physiological changes,” apparently implying the weight gain was because of Ayyad’s menstrual cycle.
On social media, angry Egyptians blasted Ayyad, calling her negligent. “Why didn’t she take pills to delay the cycle?” read a typical comment on X. The Internet firestorm was rare in Egypt, where it’s considered taboo to even talk about menstrual cycles, which many consider a private matter.
Sohair Al Attar, a former Olympic swimmer and pathology professor, said that planning around menstrual cycles is a crucial part of training and that taking a pill to delay it is often part of the plan: “The Olympics are a lifetime opportunity!” In any case, Attar points out that Ayyad’s cycle is probably not what disqualified her: “The menstrual cycle does affect weight, but not a whole 700 grams,” said Al Attar. “That’s too much.”
Whatever the case, what the controversy over Ayyad revealed, said Engy Ghozlan, who leads female empowerment initiatives at the NGO Pathfinder International, is that conservative stereotypes about women still dominate Egyptian discourse. Namely, that women “can’t do everything because they have a menstrual cycle and they can get pregnant,” said Ghozlan.
In Egypt, high-level sports are typically dominated by elites. Most training takes place in walled-off sporting clubs, where the poor have little access. For Egyptians outside of major cities, there are even fewer opportunities. That narrows the pool of female athletes. It also means that more often than not, Egypt’s top-tier competitors hail from the top strata of society, where they’re isolated from the conservative norms of their neighbors.
Until they’re competing on television.
Fans in Paris and many others online applauded Hafez, calling her an inspiration. But on social media, many of Hafez’s compatriots were far less impressed – particularly the men: “We won’t win anything with you being seven months pregnant,” wrote one commentator.
Hafez’s feat, while remarkable, isn’t exactly novel. She joins at least 25 female Olympians who are on record for having competed while pregnant. Four of them even won medals. Dutch equestrian Anky van Grunsven took gold in 2004 at Athens while five months pregnant, and Malaysian shooter Nur Suryani Mohd Taibi competed at London’s 2012 air rifle event while eight months pregnant.
“Even if this debate fired up many negative comments, it showed people that women can achieve anything and their bodies are not restraining them,” Ghozlan said. “The image they portrayed was very good.” “It is a real achievement!” she added.
Progress has often come on the back of individual examples. A particularly powerful one was Nahla Ramadan, a former Olympic weightlifter whose working-class father opened an outdoor gym for her and other aspiring girls to train from. In 2020 the story was made into an award-winning documentary, “Lift Like a Girl.”
And despite the ongoing challenges, former athletes like Al Attar say it's generally getting easier for women from Egypt to compete. “In the past, families wouldn't let their girls travel alone,” said Al Attar. And for much of society, wearing a swimsuit “wasn’t accepted at all,” she said.
Yara El Sharkawy, an Olympic fencer, agreed that times are changing: “Egyptian society is cultivating more openness than before,” she said.
For El Sharkawy, what’s still largely absent for female athletes is proper recognition.
“Despite the notable participation of Egyptian female athletes across many sports, we don’t see the same level of recognition and appreciation that the males get in areas like media coverage, support, sponsorships, and even general expectations,” said El Sharkawy.
These challenges and social discrimination that female athletes in Egypt face are reflective of a wider pattern that has kept the North African country amongst the poorest performing on the gender equality indices. So even if the number of female participants grows, and segments of society seem more accepting of them, many other layers of challenges continue to stand in the way of Egyptian female athletes aspiring to excel.
This article was published in collaboration with Egab.
September 2024