Women and Sport in India and the World: Examining the History and Suggesting Policy Reforms

Women And Sport In India And

The World: Examining The History And

Suggesting Policy Reforms

Or

Women And Sport In India And The World: A Socio-Legal Perspective

(Updated Version)

By

Karmanye Thadani

Shweta Sharma

Devaditya Chakravarti

© Karmanye Thadani

Published at Smashwords

The contact details of the main author and copyright-holder are stated as follows –

Phone number– (+91) 9810234328

E-mail Address(es) - karmanyethadani@hotmail.com,

karmanyethadani@gmail.com

Facebook profile - https://www.facebook.com/karmanye

DEDICATED TO

All those Indian girls passionate about sports, especially those who pursue their passion in spite of social prejudices and other challenges

Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world.

-Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist, 1896

The relationship between gender equality and sport is not solely about achieving equality in women’s participation and treatment within sports, but it is also about promoting ‘sport for gender equality’, or harnessing the potential of sport for social empowerment of women and girls.

– United Nations, 2007

Contents

About The Authors

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

I. Introduction

II. History Of Women And Sport

III. Discrimination Experienced By Women In Sports With Special Emphasis On India

IV. Non-Doctrinal Research

V. Position In International Law

VI. Legislative , Executive And  Judicial Position Pertaining To Women’s Sport In The United States Of America

VII. Legislative And Executive Position Pertaining To Women’s Sport In Hungary

VIII. Legislative And Executive Position Pertaining To Women’s Sports In India

IX. Contribution Of  Voluntary Organizations

X. Suggestions And Recommendations For India

XI. Conclusion

Annexure  - Questionaire

References (Non-Exhaustive)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Hailing from New Delhi, Karmanye Thadani finished his five-year integrated BA, LLB (Hons.) course from the prestigious Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), Koba (near Ahmedabad), India, in 2012. Subsequently, worked as a research associate at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) based in New Delhi, which happens to be one of India’s leading public policy think-tanks. Currently, he is working on a book he is co-authoring on Sino-Indian relations and he was also involved in making a television serial on the life of the great Indian nationalist leader Maulana Azad. He has pursued a summer course on international human rights law at Oxford University and another one on qualitative research methodology at LSE. He has several publications in journals (including the prestigious international journal Environmental Policy and Law, abbreviated as EPL, and the India-based Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, abbreviated as JIPR) and paper presentations (including in prestigious conferences, both national and international) to his credit. He has areas of interest varying from theology to public policy to human rights to international relations. He is the Associate Political Editor of an online portal, Khurpi, and is also a blogger with the Times of India.

A Hindu by birth-based cultural identity, he has also written a book aimed at addressing and dispelling anti-Muslim prejudices, especially in the Indian context (it can be downloaded for free from here - http://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/Anti-Muslim-Prejudices-in-the-Indian-Context-Addressing-and-Dispelling-them), which has been downloaded by hundreds of people, and he has also written articles on communalism (the term ‘communalism’ in the South Asian context refers to sociopolitical solidarity based on religion that infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of others) and sexism in certain sections of the Muslim community, especially in the Indian context, to cover the other side of the picture. He has also written a book ‘Onslaughts on Free Speech in India by Means of Unwarranted Film Bans’ (it can be downloaded for free from here - https://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/Onslaughts-on-Free-Speech-in-India-by-Means-of-Unwarranted-Film-Bans-Second-Edition). During his high school and college days, he was an enthusiastic table-tennis player and was a part of the school and college teams.

Hailing from Jodhpur, India, Shweta Sharma pursued the five-year integrated BCom, LLB (Hons.) course at GNLU, besides having completed a mediation training programme. She has been a district level squash player and state level basketball player. An article co-authored by her on the legal aspects of energy security can be accessed here - http://brus.in/publications/autre/energysecurity.pdf. She also presented a paper in a seminar on child rights at Jodhpur organized by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India. She has worked in leading corporate law firms in India like Amarchand Mangaldas.

Hailing from Kolkata, India, Devaditya Chakravarti is a corporate lawyer who had pursued the five-year integrated BA, LLB (Hons.) course at GNLU. He has been a district level cricketer and a district level swimmer. He has co-authored a book on internal security threats in South Asian countries, and his articles have been published in prestigious journals like JIPR (in which he co-authored an article with Karmanye), Taxmann and the International Journal of Law and Policy, and he has several paper presentations to his credit too. He has worked at leading law firms like Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan Attorneys and Phoenix Legal. Like Karmanye, he is also a history enthusiast and an article written by him pertaining to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi can be downloaded for free from here - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1687663.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would firstly like to thank Justice Mukul Mudgal, an eminent legal luminary, for having written the foreword to this book, having updated us on the emergence of a new draft of the proposed sports legislation in India and permitting us to cite passages from his own highly acclaimed book on sports law, namely Law & Sports in India: Developments, Issues and Challenges.

Our gratitude is also due to Mr. Devender Dhyani and our friends Akash Arora and Suvankur Sukul for their assistance in writing this book.

We would also like to thank the staff of the reputed website ESPN Cricinfo for allowing us to reproduce content from two articles published on their website (we would especially like to thank Mr. Partha Banerjee for getting back to us on this so very quickly), as also Mr. Zafar Abbas, editor of the leading Pakistani newspaper Dawn for allowing us to reproduce an article from his esteemed newspaper, without giving it a second thought, as also his secretary, Mr. Abdul Lateef, for having been so very cooperative.

We would also like to thank the staff of the leading publishing house Taylor and Francis (T&F), to allow us to quote extensively from their book A Social History of Indian Football: Striving to Score by eminent Indian sport historians Boria Mazumdar and Kausik Bandopadhyay. From T&F, we would especially like to thank especially Ms. Rosemary Bavister (from their London office), Ms. Shoma Chaudhary and Ms. Dimple Francis (the last two are from their New Delhi office). We also greatly appreciate that no one from these organizations asked for the manuscript, and so, they did not try to violate our confidentiality or influence the content of our work in any possible manner.

We are also grateful to the staff of the Times of India, a leading Indian newspaper, for clarifying to us that they had no objection to our reproducing their articles, and informing us that we need to take the consent of the authors of the articles. Unfortunately, since the authors (Mrs. Sharmila Tagore and Ms. Kumu Gupta) are very prominent public figures, it was not feasible to access them, but we have still taken the liberty to reproduce excerpts from their pieces. Mrs. Sharmila Tagore is a highly acclaimed Bollywood actress and wife of a late Indian cricket veteran, the Nawab of Patoudy, while Ms. Kumu Gupta, based in Massachusetts, USA, has been involved in a programme of the US president’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition to promote healthy nutrition and regular exercise.

The piece by Mrs. Sharmila Tagore suggested steps that can be taken to improve women’s cricket in India, and we are sure that she only would want her views on the subject to be publicized even more, and she would excuse us, the authors of this book, who are young writers.

Ms. Kumu Gupta’s piece is a factual report of a trophy given to Ms. Manisha Malhotra from India at the 5th International Olympic Committee World Conference on Women and Sport, this being a matter of pride for India, and we hope that Ms. Gupta, being of Indian origin and passionate about promotion of sports in this country, would only welcome the circulation of her piece.

Our heartfelt gratitude is also due to Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP), an international publishing house based in Germany, which brought out the first edition of this book, especially Mr. Yedisen Ramasamy, who inspired us to author a book and was so very cooperative.

Our gratitude is also due to our parents, siblings, teachers and peers, especially Ashwin Madhavan, Shubhang Setlur, Varun Chablani, Toms Kurian, Anindo Vyas, Charumati Haran, Kanchana Ramanujam, Saira Syed and Arshie Qureshi, for their constant encouragement and support. We are also very grateful to Mr. Susheel Cyriac as well as the library and computer laboratory staff of our university, Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), Koba (near Ahmedabad), India, as also the staff of Om Cyber Café in Gandhinagar, India, for all their help and cooperation. Last but not the least, our heartfelt gratitude is due to all those who filled up the questionnaires handed out by us for our non-doctrinal research, without which this study would have indeed lacked a very interesting and significant dimension.

FOREWORD

This publication is a pioneering effort in propagating the cause and bringing out the concerns related to women in sport. Sport is peculiar in the sense that there needs to be a justified discrimination between genders because of the physical and hormonal differences, in the sense that usually, only men should compete with men and only women should compete with other women. However it is equally important that there is no discrimination for matters pertaining to sports-related employment and admission in educational institutes. The Title IX in the United States of America and the Sex Discrimination Act in the United Kingdom have gone a long way in eliminating such discrimination. Then there are issues as to why such a gender distinction is needed say for some sports/games like chess where women and men are equal and this should be respected and encouraged.

There are efforts also being made by some of the leading sports organizers like All India Tennis Club by awarding equal prize money to tennis players of both genders. This is indeed a laudable step and should be followed by other sport associations as well. This publication, other than dealing with the sports law framework of India viz-a-viz women, highlights the remarkable achievement of women despite the adverse conditions. It needs to be emphasized that a girl has to fight twice as hard as a boy because of the many hurdles that are placed in their way and apathy in the society towards their achievements.

-Justice Mukul Mudgal

Former Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, India, former member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an international body, and author of the book Law & Sports in India: Developments, Issues and Challenges

PREFACE

Having studied in a premier law college in India and developed a keen desire to explore the application of the law to relatively unconventional domains, and as those who have been involved in sports in some form or the other, the issue of gender discrimination in this field is something that appealed to us as a research topic. Of course, this issue cannot be addressed only in legal terms, and much needs to be done which falls outside the scope of what the law can address. Thus, a socio-legal approach was needed, and the result of our efforts was the publication of the first edition of this book in April 2012. After the successful publication of the first edition of this book, it has been continually updated.

We hope the book proves interesting for scholars, sportspersons and other interested readers alike. Readers not interested in legal dimensions may skip Chapters V to VIII.

The book has been written keeping in mind a global readership, without presuming much prior knowledge about India and respecting all international sensibilities. Also, the book focuses on developments across the globe, and many of the issues discussed here are global in nature, with only most of the examples drawn from India, but examples from other parts of the world having been cited too, as is also clear from the above paragraphs. We would also like to clarify that while the book does adhere to academic norms of writing, we have tried our best to ensure that it makes an interesting read for general non-fiction readers too.

We also plead guilty to the criticism that would inevitably be advanced that the book gives a lot of space to cricket. While we do believe that it is indeed very unfair to not give non-cricket sportspersons doing India proud their due attention, which is unfortunately the case ever so often, the reason is that equally, it is totally legitimate for a nation to have its own favourite sport, which in the Indian context is cricket.

We may also clarify that we have explicitly mentioned the Muslim identity of many female sportspersons not to suggest that all Muslim societies everywhere are necessarily very patriarchal, but in fact, to rebut this notion among anti-Muslim bigots, as much as we have also delved into Muslim patriarchy in this book.

I. INTRODUCTION

Sport as a means of exercise and/or recreation is universal, and basically has nothing to do with gender. Women have faced discrimination with respect to not getting equal opportunities with respect to access to resources for sports. In the United States, legislations like Title IX have helped in prohibiting gender discrimination in the field of sports and giving men and women equal sporting opportunities on university campuses. We have argued that India, being a country that guarantees the right to equality on the basis of gender, besides other criteria like caste and creed, as a fundamental right under Article 15 of the Indian constitution, can and should also take such steps, especially with a sports bill in the pipeline.

This book seeks to examine the historical and contemporary status of women and sport in the Indian and global settings. Sociological factors for the widespread discrimination have also been looked into, such as the mindset of the patriarchal society, and myths about sport having an adverse effect on women’s health and/or beauty have been discussed.  Issues like the gender inequality in access to sports infrastructure, the lack of coverage of women’s sports in the media, inequality in prize money, socio-religious restraints on women’s clothing and some specific sports characterized as not being feminine, besides sexual harassment of female sportspersons, have been examined.

We have also elucidated the position of international law on the point, besides the legislative and executive steps taken in this direction in countries like the United States of America and Hungary. The legal position in the former has been discussed in considerable detail with case laws.

This study takes into account the initiatives taken by the Government of India to encourage the participation of women in sports and shall also consider the possibility of more pragmatic legislative and/or executive intervention, so as to weed out gender inequality in this domain and give suggestions and recommendations to ensure the implementation of Article 15 of the Indian constitution in the field of sport in letter and spirit.

Both doctrinal and non-doctrinal research methodology have been used.

Also, the language of the text, while dealing with the position of international law and role of NGOs, heavily borrows from certain sources available online, mainly UN documents. However, an exhaustive discussion of relevant provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been presented, which is based entirely on our own perusal of the convention. The web pages cited have been accessed in the period from January 2012 to December 2015.

II. HISTORY OF WOMEN AND SPORT

Historically, women have always experienced discrimination in the realm of sport.  However, women have struggled to carve out a niche even in this sphere and prove their worth.

It is very well known that women were not allowed to participate or even watch the ancient Olympic Games. However, the Spartan princess Cynisca did participate in the ancient Olympic Games in the chariot-racing event (though the efforts were of the charioteer and the one being driven unduly took the medals, but nonetheless, her spirit of adventure needs to be lauded) which she won but discrimination was exhibited when she wasn’t awarded a medal! Having said that, it would be unfair to overlook the fact that the ancient Greeks did have a separate women’s equivalent of the Olympics, the Herea Games. To talk of ancient India, while women performed generally stereotypical roles, some women did take interest in sports like ball games and even archery, ram-fighting and hunting.

Even in medieval India, Mughal emperor Jehangir’s wife Nur Jahan is known to have been an excellent hunter. Likewise, earlier in medieval India, Razia, a princess of the Mamluk dynasty, had been trained to lead armies like some other Muslim princesses of the time, which inevitably had to involve some amount of physical training, and a later example is Chand Bibi, but even for Muslim princesses (Nur Jahan and Razia were also Muslim), this was in exceptional cases and wasn’t the norm. Hindu queens of this variety in Indian history included Rani Durgavati and Rani Lakshmibai.

Talking about the medieval times, recent research has shown that women were never completely excluded from sport, especially during the festivals in England. They used to participate in foot races and ball games. Anne of Bohemia, the wife of Richard II, popularized the side-saddle, for example. Very interestingly, the first treatise on sports in the English language, The Book of St. Albans (1486) was written by a woman called Dame Juliana Berners, the prioress of Sopwell Abbey in Hertfordshire.

In the 20th century, there has been a dramatic rise of women in sports globally, thanks to women’s assertion of their right to play sports and the support they received from gender-sensitized men. On a slightly different and lighter note, the Speed vs Instinct, which can be seen here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWVkWND02Nc&feature=youtu.be - challenge featured Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova, known to be good friends off