Until recently, Saudi women were mostly barred from participating in sports in people. However, the nation was under pressure from sports governing organizations to permit girls to take part in events.
It was the nation to submit to this pressure from the International Olympic Committee for gender equality After Saudi Arabia agreed to send its first female athletes to the Olympics in 2012.
The soccer league that is brand new could be an additional step in this direction.
“The commencement of the Saudi Women’s Football League is one more significant leap forward for the future of the country, our health, our youth, and our ambitions to find each athlete be recognized and nurtured to their fullest capacity,” Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, the president of the Saudi Sports for All Federation (SFA), said in an announcement on Monday.
Though a women’s team represented the Kingdom in an regional contest that is futsal last year, saudi Arabia hasn’t had a national football team compete at the women’s World Cup. One of the explanations for why the realm resisted calls to be allowed to compete was a ban on hijab that was enforced by football’s governing body FIFA in 2007. But, that ban has been lifted in 2012.
The new league is not a part of the national football federation, which comprises youth programs and many championships for boys and men of Saudi Arabia. According to the SFA announcement, the girls league will consist of preliminary rounds which will determine regional winners, who can move to a playoff stage and compete for the WFL Champions Cup. The SFA additional the complete prize money was set in 500,000 Saudi riyal ($133,251).
The majority of the matches from the season will occur in Riyadh, Jeddah and Damman, but also the SFA said there’s”potential for more based on registrations.”
Men possess’authority’ within their female relatives
The launch of the women’s league is the most current in a series of steps the kingdom states as it pertains with equality, were taken to women. In December gender segregation was ended by the government at restaurants. On women, a ban was raised Back in August holding passports and travel abroad without the consent of a guardian. In a reform, women were awarded the right and were issued their first drivers’ licenses in 2018.
But many harsh restrictions remain in place, and the kingdom has escalated a push to stamp out dissent in the last few years. The United Nations has warned that more must be performed in order to grant women full freedom.
“Women continue to face numerous constraints under the guardianship method, which gives men arbitrary authority above their female relatives and is based on, and results in, discrimination against girls,” a panel of UN experts said in a statement following the reforms were announced annually.
Women require the permission of a male guardian to get divorced or married, open a business, or sometimes even access healthcare. In cases where a woman’s father is absent or dead, even a kid, her spouse, a male relative, brother, or even sometimes, has to give his acceptance before she can get entitlements.
Women have very little power over their own life — a woman position is equivalent to that of a small, and their testimony in court have been given less weight.
The UN experts said that despite the relaxation of some of the principles, the system set up nevertheless”negates [women’s] basic human rights and their faith as autonomous human beings,” and”severely affects women’s equal participation and decision-making from political, economic and social events”.