Hassan’s Wrong Take on Female Footballers

Chido Nwangwu puts Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan on the spot for her disparaging sexist remarks against female football players

Almost in any major city in the United States, you will see African heritage girls who play soccer also popularly known as football — around the world. They play the game for the love of the sport. Just the same way so many of our young men and women love basketball.

I believe that soccer is the most popular sport in the world! By the way I love soccer and I play and I watch the game. The women who play soccer deserve our support. They do not deserve sexist stereotypes and derogations which do not help anyone. Especially when such negative castigations of young and aspiring women are made by older women — who should be fountains of inspiration for this impressionable demographic. Moreso, it is an appalling minimization of some of our worthy ambassadors of sports excellence from Boston to Dakar, from Aba to Atlanta, from Dar es Salaam to Djibouti when such harsh comments are made by a country’s President who also is a woman.

You will therefore understand my disappointment when I read what Tanzania’s (Madam) President Samia Suluhu Hassan said at a ceremony on Sunday, August 22, 2021 to celebrate the victory of a national men’s team in a regional football championship about women footballers having “flat chests.’

For proper context, let me quote her statement at the event: “For those who have flat chests, you might think they are men and not women…. And if you look at their faces you might wonder… because if you want to marry, you want someone who is attractive, a lady who has the qualities that you want.”
She continued that for the women soccer players “those qualities have disappeared.”

Just when you thought that she had delivered enough body blows, she dropped another bomb:
“The life of marriage is like a dream to them. Because even if one of you here takes them home as your wife, your mother will ask if they are a woman or a fellow man.”

Madam President Hassan made a couple of observations and closed with a question: “Today, they are making us proud as a nation when they bring trophies to the country but if you look at their lives in the future, when the legs are tired from playing, when they don’t have the health to play, what life will they be living?”

Hassan and Ethiopia’s President Sahle-Work Zewde are the only female heads of State on the African continent.
The great pan-Africanist and progressive Julius Nyerere was the founding President of Tanzania, in 1964, formed when Zanzibar and Tanganyika merged. It is a very progressive country therefore her comments remain very jarring to many people.

At a sociological level, it has been said that women are the most harsh critics of other women. Consequently, I agree with the Tweet made by Catherine Ruge, the head of the women’s wing of the opposition Chadema party and former member of the Parliament of Tanzania, that “The comment by President @SuluhuSamia on women footballers is a humiliation to all women…. All women deserve respect.”
Or, is that too much to ask, Madam President?

QUOTE

The women who play soccer deserve our support. They do not deserve sexist stereotypes and derogations which do not help anyone. Especially when such negative castigations of young and aspiring women are made by older women — who should be fountains of inspiration for this impressionable demographic

*Dr. Nwangwu is the Founder & Publisher of USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the internet