18 - 24 January 2001
Issue No.517
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 18 - 24 January 2001 Issue No.517 |
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Half-time
Merit or bias?
High-ranking women in sport were until recently an endangered species. But decisions by the International Olympic Committee should ensure that the breed will not become extinct in the top echelons. An incident which has occurred in Egypt, however, raised the issue of quantity versus quality. Facing the Egyptian Football Association is not how many women should sit on its board but how good they actually are.
The row that erupted within the EFA stems from what is otherwise standard operating procedure. Board members of sports federations in Egypt are normally elected every four years. Exempted from this procedure are three members who are appointed by the minister of youth after being nominated by their respective federations.
Sounds simple enough and it is, at least in some federations like tennis, squash and handball where the selection process went smoothly enough. But problems arose in football. EFA President Dahshouri Harb nominated Safia Abdel-Rahman, former dean of the faculty of physical education in Alexandria, bypassing Sahar El-Hawari, a member of FIFA's women's soccer committee and chairwoman of Egypt's women's football league since its inception. Harb insists Abdel-Rahman is the right woman for the job -- even though she has scant experience in football, men or women. He stands firmly opposed to El-Hawari -- even though she has a proven track record.
Harb's opposition to El-Hawari, say insiders, is a consequence of last year's EFA elections. Apparently he had asked El-Hawari, being a woman of some clout, to back him during the elections held late last year. She refused, opting to remain strictly neutral. Even though he won the ballot, Harb didn't take kindly to El-Hawari's professed neutrality and decided to settle the score, taking it out on her by attempting to deprive her of the chance to sit on the EFA board.
The minister currently has the portfolios of the two women and the ball is in his court. While his decision will certainly be respected, it will just as surely stir controversy. But a point not to be missed in the midst of the row is the tendency for officials to put the welfare of sports in jeopardy while attending to petty squabbles that will never get anyone anywhere.
What the EFA dispute may do to the image of women in sport must also be examined. Women have come a long way not just as athletes but administrators and, as such, having their image tarnished and their name manipulated in childish tit-for-tats will not but push them and their struggle back a step or two. Last year, the International Olympic Committee recommended that 20 per cent of board members of sports federations and National Olympic Committees should be women. The immediate result was the election in October of Mounira Morkous, a member of the Egyptian Handball Federation, to the NOC board of directors. A good many people in Egypt and abroad would like to see the Morkous example become a harbinger of things to come, not the last one.
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