Patricia Gorky is a political activist and writer for Liberation News (http://liberationnews.org), and the socialist feminist magazine Breaking the Chains (http://breakingthechainsmag.com).
Sport is a universal language: all societies in history developed their own forms of athletic communal activity. Children in Egypt some 3,000 years ago played a tug-of-war game that used a hoop. The Taíno people of what is now Cuba and Puerto Rico played a volleyball-football hybrid game called Batey. Today, flag football is one of many sports enjoyed by millions of people around the world.
Physical activity and play are integral parts of community and belonging, and promotes gender equality. Women and girls who participate in sports develop self-esteem, confidence, and have lower drop-out rates from school.
Yet just as in so many other areas, women are ostracized from the sporting arena by virtue of cultural discrimination and economic inequality. Women hold up half the sky, and yet according to a UN report, women around the world earn less than men for the same types of work, and spend more time in unpaid caregiving work at home. This limits women from engaging in social activities, including sports.
From education to reproductive rights, women face obstacles in their day-to-day lives. Economies that are devastated by war or sanctions offer little opportunities for women to build a stable future. Patriarchal systems that dominate much of the planet extract ever-increasing profit from women by exploiting their labor, paid and unpaid.
When women gather together and build unity, we can fight this sexist system that oppresses so many of us and build a society for all.