SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: AP – Sudan’s women pursue soccer dream, challenging conservatives

4/1/2020: AP – Sudan’s women pursue soccer dream, challenging conservatives, by Mariam Fam

AP’s feature piece covers the controversy around the development of women’s football in Sudan.

British academic Willow Berridge said the opposition to the women’s football league by ultraconservative Islamist preacher Abdelhay Yousif is “an effort to undermine the new government by stimulating a ‘moral panic’,” adding it is “partly [inspired by] his religious views, [but] predominantly a patriarchal form of gender politics”

Taghreed Awoda, a feminist and administrator with one of the women’s teams said the league dismantles many of the main pillars underpinning al-Bashir’s regime, although laws targeting women’s freedom “disproportionately targeted the poor and less educated, and anti-regime activists.:

Hala Al Karib, regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa said many laws discriminating against women remain in Sudan.

A Sudanese woman told AP that she would not allow her daughters to play sports in open areas, stressing the importance of moderate clothing.