Although the London Olympics marks the first time Saudi Arabia has sent women to compete, many observers say the supposed breakthrough means very little.
Two women will join the originally all-male Saudi Olympic team in London: Wojdan Shahrkhani in judo and Sarah Attar in track and field. Both women were born and raised in the United States and were trained outside of the kingdom, which does not allow female athletes.
The number of Saudi women competing might also soon drop to one, after the President of the International Judo Federation announced Thursday that headscarves were banned from judo competition, citing safety reasons. Both women were approved by Saudi authorities on the condition that they would wear conservative Muslim dress.
Attar runs track in California and Shahrkhani learned judo from her dad in Saudi Arabia and has never competed.
The two women didn’t qualify for the games either, because Saudi doesn’t hold a national competition for women. Instead, it was the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that invited the two women, under the Olympic charter, which bans gender discrimination. IOC President Jacques Rogge has expressed his delight at the news and called it “an encouraging evolution,” according to a press release.
Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi researcher at Human Rights Watch, was more skeptical.
“The issue is gender discrimination not who has two minutes of fame in London.”
