By Rabia Asghar AS
Team members- Rameen Shahid AS, Menahil Altaf AS
Women are questioned when they hit the playground, they are pin pointed when they’re flying high in the sky, they are judged, they are assessed, they are held back from achieving their dreams, and yet most of us stay silent, hence in order to highlight the issues faced by women in sports, we chose this topic of “women empowerment and representation in sports”.
Before starting our project in early 2021 and having a deeper gaze into the topic, a lot of research was done on our behalf to get a grasp on facts and figures regarding our topic. We would often notice how girls and female athletes were demoralized by society and our community whether be it school or public playground. Such constituents led us to work on this issue that has not been highlighted much before.
We had spectacular motives in our minds in order to advocate for the women who want to pursue sports not just professionally but also for their physical and mental wellbeing. So, in order to execute our aim and get our project started, we conducted online surveys to the view of the local people regarding this issue. Through this, we got to have an insight on this topic as 90.9% of the people that women face issues in the field of sports.
We further conducted interview with Female athletes on both national and international level with flower Zaheer Bajwa who is national taekwondo player, Samar khan who is a cyclist and a mountaineer, Raheela Kashif who is an international table tennis player and Ms. Lynne Northcott, an athlete from the UK which allowed us to reflect upon challenges that female athletes undergo to gain representation in the sports field.
To increase our reach, we created an Instagram page with the name of Fempowered. which helped us to reach out to the youth. We further conducted a poster making activity in our school amongst 6th and 7th graders who illustrated their thoughts, opinions and vision through drawings.
From all the work done, I got to know about the perspectives of different cultures, which made us learn that all the women and young girls who are passionate about sports face various issues which prevent them from achieving their goals and dreams. The major issue that they have to face are the lack of financial support, no media coverage, lack of infrastructure facilities for sports, fewer opportunities, harassment issues, lack of family support etc. Hence, this project broadened our vision regarding the issue. It showed how sports is immensely important for a woman as it boosts their confidence levels, helps them develops leadership skills and teaches them to face the world with resilience etc.
Nelson Mandela once said: “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair”.
Allow women to grow through sports because it can be a great driver of gender equality and bring about change by breaking down barriers and destigmatizing societal stereotypes associated with female athletes playing sports because they are the leaders of tomorrow.
We are persistently working on bringing a change in our society especially on this issue to promote a more inclusive environment for women who are the leaders and conquerors of tomorrow. We will further conduct more activities including women centered tournaments and guest speaker session etc. We also aim to target the underprivileged area by conducting sports equipment collection drive and also get funds through sponsors to help us achieve our goal and have an impact. We also aim to get recognition from different institutes and NGOs.