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Sania Mirza speaks out against gender discrimination in sports

Utkarsh Bhatla
Published

Sania Mirza inaugurates Tennishub.in first Retail store in Hyderabad

Gender discrimination in sport has rendered so many female athletes frustrated, spending their entire careers in the shadow of their male counterparts and having to come up with a host of ‘movements’ in order to be treated at par with the male players. The sport of Tennis has seen various WTA players coming forward and demanding equal prize money for both male and female athletes, a demand that had to be brought to the fore because of the innate gender discrimination in the sport.

Sania Mirza has gone on to express her views about it, as she too has had to bear the brunt of it despite being the number 1 women’s doubles player in the world.

“Gender violence doesn’t lie in extremities. Rather it happens everywhere in the world. At the World Tennis Association (WTA), we have to fight for equal prize money even today. When I won Wimbledon in 2015 and came back to India, I was asked when I was planning to have kids and settle down since I had been married for five years,” said Sania

“I wasn’t considered settled or complete in my life after being a World Champion. That was the most extreme form of discrimination for me,” she added.

Sania Mirza and her father Imran Mirza have created a very hard-hitting video on the subject of gender discrimination and how it should be addressed, spoken about and dealt with in our society. For too long people have found their way around this issue without actually acknowledging it and thus have in fuelled its widespread existence.

“My wife and I have never felt the pressure or need to have a son in the 30 years of our marriage. The thought that our daughters were anything less or we should have had a son instead never crossed our minds,” said Imran Mirza

Farhan Akhtar’s initiative called MARD(Men Against Rape and Discrimination) is part of the this campaign which has been directed by Feroz Abbas Khan.

“Gender-based violence is an evil rooted at a much deeper level in our psyche than we think. It is beyond us being men and women. Our inability to understand the concept of equality irrespective of one’s gender leads to such kind of discriminations,” Farhan said

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