Female Referees Face Uphill Battle in Egyptian Premier League

Reporter: Mohamed ElKashef @kashef___)

Editor: Mohamed El Sayed

Graphic Designer: Safia Moharram

 

In a country that lives and breathes football such as Egypt, people are enjoying the return of the league that brought along not only changes in players and coaches, but also major developments in refereeing.

 

The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) announced on June 29 that former English referee Mark Clattenburg had been hired to be its head of the refereeing committee. One of Clattenburg’s first decisions was to permanently include female referees to officiate league games starting in the 2022/23 season. 

 

Female referees have had occasional chances to officiate league games. In the last game of the previous season, Shahenda El Maghraby made history as the first woman ever to officiate a game between Smouha and Pharco in the men’s Premier League. 

 

She built on baby steps taken in the 1996/1997 season. That season marked the first time for a woman to officiate  football matches in the youth and women leagues in Egypt.

 

But how readily will they be accepted?

 

“It’s a good step, but I don’t think it will have a great result in such a patriarchal society, they might not be accepted because of the mentality of a huge number of Egyptian men who refuse to see women in charge,” said Amira Farag, the Recreation and Fitness Manager at the AUC Sports Complex .

 

On the other hand, Farag expressed her happiness that Egyptian women are taking some of the credit they deserve and are now getting opportunities in professions that were exclusive to men for a long time.

 

The announcement made by the EFA includes two female referees, Shahenda El Maghraby and Noura Samir. Yara Atef, Menna Attallah, Gamalat Ahmed, and May Hassan also made the list of assistant referees, marking a huge step towards the inclusion of women in Egypt’s leading sport. 

 

The step took a long time; El Maghraby became a referee in 2014 and was recognized by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) as an international referee two years later.

Mohamed Arafa, Assistant Director of Facilities Operations and Special Events in the Office of Athletics at AUC, sees only positives coming out of this move.

 

“I believe that including female referees was implemented in European countries for a few years now. It will help in improving the behavior of the players and reducing violations on Egyptian football pitches,” said Arafa.

 

Egypt is ranked 134th out of 153 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), so the inclusion of female referees is a huge step toward achieving equality between both genders.

 

“As Egyptians, we never imagined that we would have female referees officiating high-level competitions; it will increase the parity between men and women,” said Arafa.

 

He believes that this decision will encourage young women to pursue a career in sports and maybe take a position in refereeing later on.

 

Samir Osman, a former International Referee and former head of the EFA’s refereeing committee, says: “I think including women is a very good idea because some of the female referees are very skilled and have strong personalities that would help them take charge of high level matches.”

 

Osman says that such inclusion would raise the level of Egyptian refereeing creating a sort of competition between all referees and motivating them to perform better.

 

“It will be an honest competition between all referees of both genders, as female referees have participated more than three times in big football occasions such as the world cup, and the last of them is international referee Menna Attallah,” said Osman.

 

He told The Caravan about the effects of having female referees on Egyptian football as a whole.

 

“I think it would have an immediate impact, specially on the female football league as FIFA offers financial support to the countries that have a female football league, and Egypt is the first Arab and African country to have female referees as Sahar El Hawary was the first female referee in the 1996/1997 season,” said Osman.

 

Three rounds of 26 matches have been played already, but the female referees haven’t yet been assigned leaving Clattenburg’s decision up in the air.