Afeida Khandaker, from a southern constituency the place Islamist lawmakers gained the latest polls, is aware of the price of serving as a job mannequin: Photograph: AFP
DHAKA:
Bangladesh’s nationwide soccer staff face daunting odds at their first-ever Girls’s Asian Cup, however have already scored a serious victory by qualifying.
Within the South Asian nation of 170 million, social stigma, household expectations, poverty and non secular hardliners have lengthy relegated girls and ladies to sports activities sidelines.
The primary girls’s soccer league matches befell in 2011, and the squad, identified to followers because the Pink and Inexperienced, have saved urgent ahead regardless of deeply embedded prejudices.
“Many extra ladies would have joined us if the group had been even barely supportive,” captain Afeida Khandaker informed AFP forward of her aspect’s March 3 debut in Australia.
In rural areas particularly, girls and ladies are discouraged from and even harassed for taking part in sport, with some non secular leaders deeming it indecent.
“Women usually needed to give up soccer after main faculty,” Khandaker stated. “Neighbours would complain about how teenage ladies may play soccer whereas sporting shorts.”
To remain on the pitch, ladies additionally should fend off stress to marry earlier than they flip 18.
Native league participant Ennima Khanom Richi, 20, stated lots of her teammates have been compelled out of soccer and into organized marriages.
“Households usually can’t bear the social stress, in order that they cease their ladies from taking part in,” she stated.
‘Bitter phrases’
Two years of political turmoil have solely elevated the obstacles.
Emboldened by upheaval for the reason that 2024 rebellion that overthrew the federal government, Islamist activists have directed a lot of their consideration in the direction of Bangladeshi girls, accusing them of inadequate modesty.
A number of girls’s soccer matches have been cancelled final yr after pitch invasions and threats of violence.
Whereas the Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion, which gained final month’s basic elections, has vowed to again girls’s rights, an Islamist coalition’s unprecedented share of the vote stirred fears of regressive gender insurance policies.
Skipper Khandaker, from a southern constituency the place Islamist lawmakers gained the latest polls, is aware of the price of serving as a job mannequin.
“My sister and I each needed to be footballers, and for that my mother and father — particularly my mom — needed to endure bitter phrases,” stated the 20-year-old, who began taking part in on the age of 5.
Her father, Khandaker Arif Hossain Prince, backed his daughters’ athletic ambitions, however he famous not all households have that luxurious.
“Our aspiring footballers come from marginalised households, and it’s usually not doable for them to supply monetary help,” stated Prince, a girls’s soccer organiser.
“A few of their mother and father are rickshaw pullers, labourers, or tea distributors… Some can’t afford it and give up soccer. I really feel like quitting too each time I see a lady leaving the sport.”
Shifting attitudes
Whereas on a break from passing drills at an early morning coaching session on the Nationwide Stadium in Dhaka, Bangladesh Soccer Federation coach Saiful Bari Titu, 53, stated “simply speaking in regards to the girls’s staff is a privilege for me”.
“They confronted quite a lot of protests,” he added.
After years of constructing grassroots help for ladies’s soccer, the federation is beginning to see a payoff.
Greater than 40 soccer golf equipment throughout Bangladesh now prepare ladies from the age of 9.
“We did not actually have a nationwide girls’s staff earlier than 2008,” stated Mahfuza Akter Kiron, 59, head of the BFF girls’s wing.
“It was an actual wrestle for them to play soccer.”
Whereas salaries for nationwide staff gamers stay low, particularly in comparison with the boys’s earnings, the small amount of cash has introduced stability to dozens of households.
“I needed to supply a livelihood to the footballers,” Kiron added.
Organisers stated that as progress in girls’s soccer turns into evident, sponsors are starting to point out curiosity, and folks’s attitudes are shifting.
“Individuals appear blissful now,” stated Khandaker. “They collect to see me once I go dwelling.”
She is clear-sighted in regards to the scale of the competitors as Bangladesh open their marketing campaign in opposition to nine-time Asian champions China on Tuesday.
“China and North Korea are far forward of us within the rankings… however we are going to give our greatest.” AFP
