It’s been almost 50 years since the first Egyptian women qualified for the Olympics. Their attempt was not recoded by the Egyptian Olympic Committee (EOC), but Sali Amro, Najwan Abdelwahab and Jehan Ragai all qualified in their events for the 1960 Olympics held in Rome, Italy.

They never made it and the press reported different reasons for the women’s failure to participate. Some said it was Egypt’s taboo on female athletes, others said there had been confusion about deadlines.

In the case of Ragai, politics may have been at play. Ragai is the daughter of Doria Shafik, a feminist leader who was placed under house arrest in 1957.

Just three days before her departure for Rome, she was shocked to learn that she couldn’t participate. Ragai had trained vigorously for four years for the event.

“I cried a little,” she says adding she had no regrets as her experience taught her discipline. She recounts a scene from the movie Chariots of Fire, when the main character, who is training for the 1924 Olympics, is asked why he is working so hard. He replies that it is for the pursuit of excellence – and not for the medal.

Late by international standards, but among the first of the Arab nations, two decades later Egyptian women got their first chance at an Olympic medal.

Courtesy Modern Pentathlon Twenty-six Egyptian women are heading to Beijing’s Olympic games in August.

In 1984, five female athletes crossed uncharted waters when they represented Egypt in diving, swimming and synchronized swimming competitions at the Olympics in Los Angeles.

Among them was synchronized swimming duet Dalia Mokbel and Sahar Helal. Mokbel, now in her early forties, began training at just 12 years old. She describes her training as difficult and challenging, amounting to up to eight hours a day. She worked hard, focusing on flexibility, breath control and increasing her sensitivity to music.

She says much of the credit for her sport goes to Safeya (Sofi) Tharwat, current board member of the Egyptian Swimming Federation and former synchronized swimmer. “Sofi fought for synchronized swimming to be recognized in [Egypt],” says Mokbel. “She was always defending us, protecting us and making sure that we were getting our rights.”

She recounts Tharwat’s efforts to allocate a budget to support synchronized swimming in the country, a challenge Tharwat is still struggling with. “Maybe other girls in other sports do not have Sofi Tharwat to get their rights,” says Mokbel. “If it wasn’t for Sofi, synchronized swimming wouldn’t be here.”

Twenty-six Egyptian women are now preparing for this August’s Beijing Olympics, including the country’s first female wrestler and a team of nine synchronized swimmers. There are high hopes for modern pentathlon athlete Aya Madani, who at 16, was the youngest athlete in history to participate in this event at the Olympic level during the 2004 Athens games.

“This is my sport and I love it... I am a Muslim but I am not doing anything wrong,” says Hayat Farag. “I am doing something I love.”

But while there’s been some record breaking, women in this country continue to face challenges above and beyond the race to the finish line. They report unequal treatment and fewer privileges within sports federations, face a nation that has long held a less than positive perception of their involvement in sports, and dress requirements that contradict religious and cultural customs.

According to Tharwat, Egyptians have become more conservative in their attitudes since the 1950s, when she swam professionally. Tharwat says that while sports like fencing and horseback riding are less criticized because the outfits do not reveal much of the woman’s body, diving and swimming cause challenges, “so we fight,” she says, “for the girls’ right to swim.”

When women first entered the traditionally male domain of sports, they faced a disparaging public. According to Inas Mazhar, board member of the women’s council of the EOC and a sports journalist at Al-Ahram newspaper, the widespread perception was that sports were a thing reserved for men. This, along with dress codes that contradict cultural norms and religious beliefs, created paralyzing obstacles for women trying to break into the world of sport.

Mazhar recounts spectators’ reactions at Egypt’s track and field championship in 1991. Men made offensive and derogatory remarks from the stands. Upset at their attitude and worried that the athletes’ performance would be affected, she reported the group of men to the federation’s president, who escorted them out of the stadium.

“The girls could hear the remarks,” says Mazhar. “I felt as though they were going to start crying. [] This atmosphere forces girls to quit.” She adds that while some women disregard the harassment and persist, it is still one of the major setbacks for female athletes in Egypt, especially for younger girls.

Football was last to become accessible to women, despite efforts of Sahar El-Hawari, founder of Egypt’s national football team and member of the FIFA women’s committee. Until the end of 1997, Egypt’s favorite sport was reserved for men.

According to Mazhar, the decision to allow women into football came as a direct result of FIFA enforcement on the Egyptian football federation. But despite the fact that the sport gained recognition, Mazhar says the culture and traditions opposing females participating in such a ‘masculine’ sport resulted in the women’s football team having smaller budgets and less sponsors than their male counterparts. Because of public opposition to women wearing shorts in public, El-Hawari had to design special leggings for the girls to wear under their shorts.

Twenty-year-old Hayat Farag has had her share of criticism. Egypt’s first female to qualify for the Beijing 2008 Olympic wrestling event, she says it was an instinctive ‘fight or flight’ reaction that threw her into the Olympics wrestling arena. Instead of bolting under pressure when faced with ridicule by her community, Farag reacted with growing resistance.

Farag grew up in a conservative neighborhood in Alexandria that she says expected very little of women. “After completing their studies, girls end up at home,” says Farag. “I wanted to break [that] rule and preconceived idea.” Criticized for her attempt to participate in the sport, Farag says, “this is a difficult endeavor because I believe that the society is very closed-minded and does not have the spirit of encouragement. But I accepted the challenge.”

Farag, who is veiled, says that her participation in wrestling contradicts her religious beliefs due to the revealing spandex suit she must wear to compete. “What I am wearing is forbidden,” she says. Farag once asked her trainer if she could compete in an outfit that would fulfill her duties as a muhajjiba (veiled Muslim woman), but was advised that this would be impossible as the rules in international competitons have clear dress codes.

“I know that dressing this way is wrong, but this is my sport and I love it. I cannot argue with religion, but this is out of my hands. Yes, I am a Muslim but I am not doing anything wrong. I am doing something I love,” she says. “After I am done with the Olympics, I’m hoping to be able to go for ‘Umrah (lesser pilgrimage). After that I will leave the sport.”

Farag, who faced resistance from her parents when she first took up professional wrestling, promised them that she would achieve something great and then quit. “My goal for the Olympics is to stand on the podium and raise Egypt’s flag,” she says.

As part of her rigorous training, Farag practices with male wrestlers. A lack of experienced female wrestlers in Egypt has Farag a little worried about competing with foreign female wrestlers who she says have more experience. “The girls abroad are exactly like males [in their strength],” she says.

While Farag says that the Egyptian wrestling federation has changed their attitude regarding female wrestling, she adds that some issues still need to be addressed: Male athletes are given better trainers than women and are sent to camps to compete abroad more often than women are. The subsequent lack of training women receive broadens the competency gap between Egyptian female athletes and their foreign counterparts. “The difference between us is that they [foreign women] receive a lot of training whereas we have limited training camps and for limited time periods.”

General Mustafa Abdulla, General Manager of the Wrestling Federation, admits that female wrestling is more advanced abroad than it is in Egypt, adding that, unlike in Egypt, other countries have both male and female coaches. Abdulla also believes that Egyptian women, unlike their foreign opponents, have a physical disadvantage in this sport. “There is a difference in how the Arab woman is built. [Arab women] have more supple bodies and are not accustomed to disciplined training.”

But Abdulla adds that female athletes in Egypt only practice the sport professionally for a few years before they quit due to cultural expectations, such as being married before a certain age. It is thus a bad investment. “The trainers train the men because the men have a future in this sport but girls get married. So trainers save their efforts for the athletes who can accomplish more,” he explains.

Women leaving their sports due to social pressures such as marriage commitments is common in sports federations across Egypt, who in turn shed a wary eye towards financing and sponsoring young female athletes.

“They stop when they are still blooming,” says Abdel Hamid Ghaleb, director general of the Shooting Federation. He says that the three women that were sent to compete in the Sydney games have 2000 have all left the sport because they got married or had children, whereas if they continued they may have improved.

Mohamed Ibrahim, president of the Egyptian Weightlifting Federation, says that women’s sports careers are short lived due to Arab and Egyptian culture. Athletes may be forbidden to continue weightlifting by their fiancées or parents. In addition, he says women in the Arab world are more pampered than Western girls thus, “they have difficulties putting up with tough training.”

“When women enter this sport they are victimizing themselves because they are committing themselves to [something] that is overwhelming for them. They dream of becoming champions, but do not commit to the practice that will help them achieve that position.” He explains that girls in the wrestling federation have to go through at least four hours of training a day, which many of the girls do not abide by. Ibrahim says that it is therefore foolish to put efforts and invest in athletes who will abandon the sport.

Ibrahim uses Nahla Ramadan as an example. She beat the world record for the snatch lift in 2003 at the World Weightlifting Championships in Vancouver and was trained by the Egyptian Weightlifting Federation for the 2004 Olympics. Ramadan was excluded from the federation’s list of athletes this year due to too many missed practices and will not participate in the 2008 Olympics. “Nahla was under psychological pressure,” says Ibrahim of her poor performance in the 2004 Olympics.

Mazhar agrees. “She was the hope for a medal.” Mazhar believes that Ramadan — 18 at the time — was under pressure from the federation, the media, and from the public. “Ramadan felt that 70 million people were waiting for her to get a medal and so she crumbled under the pressure.”

In order to encourage women’s participation in the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) holds a Sports and Women conference before each Olympic game to discuss the challenges that female athletes face around the world. “We work on improving situations and creating more opportunities for women athletes, calling for more women coaches and more women referees, more female athletes, not only in competitions,” says Mazhar, who attended the 2000 and 2004 conferences.

During the 2008 conference, resolutions aiming to enhance women’s participation in the Olympics were set up. Mazhar says that for Egypt, they help little. After visiting sports federations in Egypt to call for such causes, she was met with resistance and tedious bureaucracy. “You feel like you have duties and responsibilities towards your job in the committee, but you can’t do them because [the efforts] usually fail.” et

Reintroduced to Athens in 1896 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Olympics were inspired by the ancient Greek Olympic games and were originally restricted to male athletes. The first women Olympians joined the games in 1900, despite de Coubertin’s objections. Nineteen women, representing five different countries, competed in “upper-class” sports, such as tennis, croquet, and golf. Four years later, in the 1908 London games, the range of sports increased to include archery and figure skating.

Swimming, fencing and gymnastics were opened for female participation in the 1912 Stockholm games. But it was not until 1928 in Amsterdam that women were allowed to compete in track and field for the first time.

At Sydney’s 2000 Olympics, four new competitions for women were added: weightlifting, modern pentathlon, taekwondo, and triathlon, while the Athens 2004 games saw the addition of women’s wrestling.

Year	Number of Egyptian Participants	Names and Sport
1984 Los Angeles	115 (109 male, 6 female)	(Diving): Rim Hassan, (Swimming): Sherwite Hafaz, Nevine Hafaz, (Sync. Swimming): Sahar Helal, Sahar Youssef, Dahlia Mokbel
1988 Seoul	54 (52 male, 2 female)	(Judo): Nagla’a Mohamed, (Table Tennis): Nehal Mushref
1992 Barcelona	82 (79 male, 3 female)	(Judo): Heba Hefni, (Swimming): Rania Olwani, (Table Tennis): Nehal Mushref
1996 Atlanta	30 (28 male, 2 female)	(Judo): Heba Hefni, (Swimming): Rania Olwani
2000 Sydney	88 (75 male, 13 female)	(Fencing): Shaima’a El Gammal, May Mustafa, (Gymnastics): Shereen Tuma, (Judo): Heba Rasheed, (Table Tennis): Passant Othman, (Shooting): Marwa Sultan, Yasmeen Helmi, Heba Sherif, (Swimming): Rania Olwani, (Sync. Swimming): Sarah Abdeljawad, Heba Abdeljawad
2004 Athens	107 (94 male, 13 female)	(Archery): Lamia Elbahnasawi, (Athletics): Marwa Hussein, (Fencing): Shaima’a El Gammal, (Judo): Samah Ramadan, (Mondern Pentathlon): Aya Madani, (Rowing): Doa’a Musa, (Swimming): Salma Ismael, (Sync. Swimming): Heba Abdeljawad, Dalia Allam, (Taekwondo): Abeer Elesawi, (Weightlifting): Nahla Ramadan, Jermeen Anwar