Afghan female athletes in the diaspora are a striking example of freedom of movement and freedom of expression. But women in the country itself do not have access to these freedoms.

“By participating in the Paris Games, I will show the world the strength of Afghan women,” said Yulduz Hashimi The Irish Times. Yulduz is part of the six-member team that will represent Afghanistan at the 2024 Paris Olympics, along with her sister Fariba, sprinter Kimia Yousofi and three male athletes. This year, the Olympics will be held with complete gender parity, with exactly 5,250 male and 5,250 female athletes.

In Afghanistan, women are banned from playing sports. This is one of nearly 100 Taliban decrees that segregate women and restrict their participation in public life – a system known as gender apartheid. In assembling the Afghan team, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) consulted the now-exiled National Olympic Committee, not the Taliban. The Taliban, in turn, do not recognize the entire team. “Only three athletes represent Afghanistan,” a regime spokesman said. By supporting an Afghan team made up of an equal number of men and women, the Olympic Committee, and by extension the participating countries, signaled to the Taliban that their institution of gender apartheid is unacceptable and incompatible with universal principles of human rights and gender equality.

Unfortunately, virtue-mongering is unlikely to be an effective tool for a regime that does not care about its international obligations and image. Moreover, when official international bodies and governments exclude women from political negotiations and remove women’s rights from the agenda, soft signals such as exclusion from international socio-cultural events are undermined.

Virtue on the world stage

Sport plays a crucial role as a virtue signal on the world stage. Consider the backlash against Saudi Arabia hosting the Women’s Tennis Association finals. Tennis champions and women’s rights activists such as Chrissie Evert and Martina Navratilova spoke out against the WTA’s decision, saying they had “not helped build women’s tennis so that it could be exploited by Saudi Arabia”. They opposed Saudi Arabia hosting the finals on the grounds that the WTA’s values ​​were not aligned with those of a country “that currently has a male guardianship law that essentially makes women the property of men”, “that criminalises the LGBTQ community to the point of possible death penalty” and whose long-standing record on human rights and fundamental freedoms has been a matter of international concern for decades”. They argued that by hosting the finals in Saudi Arabia, the WTA would be complicit in “sportswashing,” that is, using sport to superficially improve its reputation without accompanying reforms.

The backlash was so fierce that Saudi Ambassador to the United States Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud issued an official statement in response to the editorial, posted on the website of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. “Failing to recognize the great strides women have made in Saudi Arabia devalues ​​our remarkable journey. Like many women around the world, we have looked to the tennis legends as trailblazers and role models… a beacon of hope that women can truly achieve anything,” she wrote.

Saudi Arabia, unlike Afghanistan, places great importance on its international image. One of the goals of its Vision 2030 is to make the country a global economic hub; of course, this requires the approval of its global partners. Targeted investment in sport is one of these dual economic and PR strategies. Another is to strengthen its status as a leader in gender parity and women’s rights. Hosting the WTA Finals is a success for Saudi Arabia on both fronts and, given its strategic priorities, an issue that the country had to respond to.

The Saudi ambassador pointed to progress in women’s participation in the labor market (300,000 women-owned businesses) as well as investments in the development of women’s sports. “We invest and engage in sports as part of a comprehensive program to be the best version of ourselves… we should strive to improve it every day, from encouraging girls to pick up a racket, to raising awareness about breast cancer in rural areas, to developing a curriculum for women to gain financial literacy.”

In sport, witnessing female athletes can encourage young girls to challenge the status quo and take up sport, which in turn brings a range of benefits, from later marriage to better physical and mental health. This is one of the arguments Princess Reema used for why Saudi Arabia should host the WTA Finals: by confronting them, norms can change. In fact, role modeling has been proven to be one of the most effective levers for changing social and gender norms. By confronting positive deviance, women and girls (as well as men and boys) can see a new horizon of possible gender roles and norms.

In their editorial, Evert and Navratilova had hoped that the symbolic exclusion of Saudi Arabia would increase pressure on the country to reform its laws. Exclusion from international tournaments is a strong signal, but it alone cannot change the laws of a state – at least not in the short term.

Ultimately, the WTA went ahead with the deal with Saudi Arabia; the country will host the WTA Finals for the next three years and the prize money has been increased by 70% to $15.25 million. For a country that claims to be committed to women’s rights reform, one can hope that inclusion in these sporting tournaments can have a positive impact in the long term.

Do symbolic victories matter?

In the face of an increasingly repressive Taliban regime, Afghan female athletes in the diaspora are a powerful symbol of freedom of movement and expression. Their participation in the Olympic Games is also a powerful symbol of solidarity with the Afghan people – especially Afghan women and girls. But these same women and girls in the country will not be able to enjoy these freedoms. Otherwise they risk imprisonment, torture and death.

In Afghanistan’s case, the symbolic significance of a gender-balanced Olympic team is undermined by ongoing efforts to engage with the Taliban. In June, the third round of the UN Doha Process took place, with the Taliban participating for the first time. There were no women in the UN delegation, and women’s rights were not on the public agenda – concessions to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. Despite massive outcry from human rights activists around the world, it seemed that the UN and other key international actors were on the path to normalizing the regime and its system of gender apartheid. But according to Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacemaking Affairs, who chaired Doha III, “this meeting and this process of engagement do not represent normalization or recognition.”

Some, like former Olympian Friba Rezayee, argue that the participation of Afghan teams, even under a flag not recognized by the Taliban, could legitimize the regime. Rezayee argues that the Olympics should exclude all Afghan teams, as it did in 2000, and let Afghan athletes compete on the refugee Olympic team instead. But even excluding the country will be ineffective unless significant political pressure is brought to bear on the regime on all fronts.

When it comes to a way to deal with the Taliban, the international community suffers from schizophrenic thinking. Some argue that isolation is the only way, potentially leading to the total bans called for by Rezayee. Others push for a conditional engagement, as we saw in Doha. In any case, a regime so steadfast in its commitment to oppressing women will need to be given significant incentives – more than just symbolic – to apply real pressure and bring about change.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Wilson Center.