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Ramadan is an annual period of religious observance in Islam, during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset every day for thirty consecutive days. Though Ramadan will not begin until the end of August this year, the Inter Press Service recently ran an article about a particularly interesting phenomenon that coincides with Ramadan in some Middle Eastern countries. Since the evenings during Ramadan are, traditionally, reserved for families to spend time together at home, television channels often premiere new soap operas during Ramadan. Often, however, these Ramadan-specific programs portray women in a particularly negative light. Karim Radhi, a writer from Bahrain, explains:

The dramas that are shown on our channels during Ramadan are of abused women who cannot fight or evil females who cannot live without destroying others…I know that production houses promote negative images of women not because they are against them, but just to sell their soaps…They can create a balance between what people want and (roles that) don’t stereotype women (as greedy, malicious, artificial or weak).

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Ruqaya Al-Gassra from Bahrain

I should preface this article by saying that I am not Muslim, but have lived in a Muslim country (Morocco) while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. While in Morocco, I usually ran every morning bright and early, hoping to avoid people and children walking around the streets because I got so much attention. My body was covered (despite the desert sun shining brightly down on me; my hair was only covered by a baseball cap to keep the sun off of my face) for respect of the culture and people in my village.  It was [and still is] strange for a girl to be running and exercising outside by herself in Morocco.  Sometimes the local kids would follow me on their bikes trying to talk to me and men would catcall me. I would try to ignore them but sometimes tried to avoid the attention by skipping my morning runs.

I thought of women and sports as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) finishes up their visit in Chicago (one of the 2016′s summer olympic candidate cities).  Since the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, about 22% of all athletes were women. Read the rest of this entry →