Students at Northwestern University in Qatar have set up the university’s first women’s soccer team, encouraging female participation in sports.
Students Maha Al Ansari and Al Dana Al Misned recruited members for the team with the hope of encouraging more young women to become active members of the sports community. They were motivated by a recent study conducted by Assistant Professor in Residence Geoff Harkness, which showed that females represent only 7.3 percent of athletes registered to sports federations and clubs.
The university will help organize a student soccer tournament next semester in Education City. The universities that already have female soccer teams are Texas A&M University at Qatar, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar and Georgetown University School of Foreign Services in Qatar.
Al Ansari said her main focus for the upcoming season would be “to get more female students interested and lay the foundation for a soccer programme that will to continue grow. We want this to go on even after we graduate.”
According to Professor Harkness, who authored ‘Out of Bounds: Cultural Barriers to Female Sports Participation in Qatar’, in The International Journal of the History of Sports, “female athletes in Qatar encounter numerous barriers to participation, including issues related to religion, family and changing gender dynamics. While female athletic participation is on the upswing in Qatar, overall rates of involvement remain somewhat low.”
The Peninsula
