Tennis legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova relied on “outdated stereotypes and western-centric views of our culture” in urging the ladies’s tennis tour to keep away from holding its season-ending match in Saudi Arabia, the dominion’s US ambassador says.
“These champions have turned their back on the very same women they have inspired and it is beyond disappointing,” Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud wrote on Tuesday in response to an article by Evert and Navratilova in The Washington Post final week.
“Sports are meant to be a great equaliser that offers opportunity to everyone based on ability, dedication and hard work,” the Saudi diplomat stated.
“Sports should not be used as a weapon to advance personal bias or agendas … or punish a society that is eager to embrace tennis and help celebrate and grow the sport.”
Tennis has been consumed in current weeks by debate over whether or not the game ought to comply with golf and others in making offers with Saudi Arabia, the place rights teams say ladies proceed to face discrimination in most points of household life and homosexuality is a significant taboo.
In their article, Evert and Navratilova requested the WTA Tour whether or not “staging a Saudi crown-jewel tournament would involve players in an act of sportswashing merely for the sake of a cash influx”.
In current years, Saudi Arabia has enacted wide-ranging social reforms, together with granting ladies the proper to drive and largely dismantling male guardianship legal guidelines that had allowed husbands and male kin to manage many points of ladies’s lives.
Same-sex relations stay punishable by loss of life or flogging, although prosecutions are uncommon.
“While there’s still work to be done, the recent progress for women, the engagement of women in the workforce, and the social and cultural opportunities being created for women are truly profound, and should not be overlooked,” stated Princess Reema, who has been the ambassador to the US since 2019 and is a member of the International Olympic Committee’s gender, equality and inclusion fee.
“We recognise and welcome that there should be a healthy debate about progress for women,” the diplomat stated.
“My country is not yet a perfect place for women. No place is.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
