Will you let your daughter be a footballer?

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Towheed Feroze
Published : 16:31, Sep 27, 2018 | Updated : 16:40, Sep 27, 2018

Towheed FerozeWith the senior side’s ranking sliding to near 200, football in Bangladesh is more of a women’s game now. What the men’s team could not deliver, the women’s sides have managed with the U-16 team emerging group champions in the first round of the Asian Women’s Championship beating Vietnam by two goals.
Just to add more contexts to that the main Bangladesh national team will never be able to win against Vietnam, at least not in the near future anyway.
Obviously, the nation is rejoicing because only a few days ago, the men’s side fumbled miserably in Dhaka to take an early exit from SAFF, which can arguably, called a tournament of the minnows of Asia.
Within the Asian context, SAFF may have very little relevance though in South Asia, it’s still the lower sides’ World Cup. That’s because most teams vying here know that their chances of playing at top level meets are very slim.
But this article is not a conventional look into how the women players of Bangladesh have shone while the men’s team floundered. It’s actually about the girls who play the game, the social narrative around them plus the hypocrisy society conceals while praising the achievements of the women’s game.
Just like the heading says: will middle class educated families, noticing a sporting aptitude in their daughters, ever allow them to take up football or any other sport as a profession?
Our female footballers and their backgrounds
As accolades pour on our women’s football teams, the one significant point which is ignored is the backgrounds of the players. In reality, most of the girls playing in almost all the age categories are from rural Bangladesh. Sport for these women was a gateway into economic emancipation.
Today, these players are our gems but when they first began playing, it was mostly out of desperation andto find a path through which they can not only set aside everyday stress but also carve a way for income.
For the Kalshindur girls who exploded into the national scene about five years ago, football was taken up initially for fun, though in time, the aim was to secure spots in the emerging women’s game that was still in its infancy in Bangladesh.
I have read interviews of some of the girls who have brought us glory. Several have said that the idea of taking up football seriously to make a living was frowned upon by rural society.
“Things changed with national awards, sponsorships plus assistance from the government,” they commented.
So here’s a valid question: why isn’t there any girl from the cities in the national teams?
Can anyone show players in the women’s teams who are city educated with a comfortable middle class or upper middle class background?
The truth is, they can’t. This is because the educated middle class, which is vociferous in celebrating such successes of our ladies will not allow their daughters to try to achieve fame in sport.
Once again, we come face to face with social double standards, where the sporting triumph of some women is deemed a symbol of progress while there is an invisible barrier preventing girls from higher social classes in getting seriously involved in sport.
Our social definitions are still parochial
The truth is, sport as a profession or even a semi-professional pursuit had never been encouraged within the educated classes. Forget about allowing the daughter into sports, I have hardly come across an urban family which had approved and encouraged the sporting aspirations of a son.
When we were in our teens in the early 80s, football was the king of all sports and almost every area of Dhaka had tremendously talented youngsters who came from educated classes. Some were superb dribblers, others played cricket with flair and some displayed prowess in racket sports. Unfortunately, not a single person from the countless ones I came across ever became a sportsman or even kept sports as a peripheral passion. It’s not that one has to take up sport as a full time profession if one excels in it. There is always the way to pursue it as an enthusiast.
Sadly, society is so besotted with certain professions that anything that goes out of the age old template is promptly discouraged, denounced and even barred.
All city schools have girls’ football yet not a single person has emerged from these teams to take a spot in the age level national teams. The pressure for academic excellence is so overpowering that automatically, sport of any kind is swiftly set aside. Parents tacitly approve of their wards tilting towards academic pursuits with conventional definition of ‘good’ indicating the studious while the ‘bad’ reserved for the sport loving outgoing intractable one.
The point is, to play for age level national sides, a girl doesn’t have to sacrifice her future plans of entering one of the approved professions; she only needs to make adjustments to allow both.
Combining sport with studies
She can still play without hampering her education, and once someone is in a team, whether it’s the national side or the local league, qualities like camaraderie, unity, determination, tenacity and the desire to excel are inculcated.
Attributes which will become far more helpful in real life rather than the star studded certificates.
I do apologise, but in urban areas, young people, both boys and girls, are proselytised into believing that unless they get top grades, life’s all other successes are meaningless.
The blame of course lies on parents who are perpetuating a rotten social credo which had always sneered at sport as a profession.
In fact, this insular perception had always denigrated anything involving arts, sports, theatre and creativity.
Interestingly, when our girls win, it’s these people from middle class urban sections who go into an overdrive, using words like emancipation, development and progress.
But they will rarely allow their daughters to pursue any sporting desires, pouring cold water on their desires, saying dream shattering things like: “This will not make a living, the profession won’t give you social status or what will you do if you fail to go to the top?”
In some cases it’s that old hackneyed line: “Who will marry a sportswoman?”
If the fear that one may fail to make a living out of sport is the reason why many girls in urban areas have to kill their sporting passions, then one has to say, the ethos is profoundly flawed.
If academic brilliance, lure of jobs at multinational companies or regular income are ingrained in our psyche then at least we should try to develop a culture where sport is not killed but permitted to be pursued as a hobby.
Social status can come from sport too
How a woman shines or progresses in life cannot be foretold by parents or guardians. She may become the top professional that the family may boast of or, she may turn out to be the celebrated footballer with photos in papers, medals in the drawing room and plenty of material possessions because, governments have always made it a point to recognise sporting glory with rich rewards – land plots, flats, money and jobs.
And to correct a misconception, a sportsperson’s income capability does not end with his/her playing career; in fact, the earning potential goes up afterwards if that person is canny enough to take globally accredited coaching licenses to take up training teams and myriad other posts on offer at schools, colleges or universities.
To end, this habit of going gaga over the success of girls’ teams on social media actually make the hypocrisy stand out.
Applauding something which you won’t allow your daughters to pursue means there’s a deep line of prejudice affecting our perceptions.
There may be many counter points against what I wrote, but perhaps there’s an unsavoury fact in it too — something, which we don’t want to admit.

Towheed Feroze is a News Editor at Bangla Tribune and teaches at the University of Dhaka.

/zmi/
***The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the opinions and views of Bangla Tribune.
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