Female Sports: Saudi officials may allow women’s clubs

LONDON: Saudi Arabia has set up a ministerial committee to consider allowing women’s sports clubs, according to daily al-Watan despite opposition to female exercise from religious conservatives. Abdullahal Zamil, a senior official from the General Presidency of Youth Welfare said the committee was being formed to end the ‘chaos’ surrounding women’s sports clubs which are effectively unregulated. “The mission of the committee is focused on building a system for these clubs,” the newspaper, owned by a member of the Saudi royal family, reported Zamil as saying. In the austere desert kingdom, powerful clerics have long argued against women playing sports or doing physical exercise.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2012.