The French Olympics hijab ban should bother female athletes everywhere

French sprinter Sylla Sounkamba, seen here at the European Athletics Championships, was forced to compete at the Paris Olympics in a baseball cap due to France's ban of its athletes wearing the hijab. GettyShow less

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but France is hosting the “first gender-equal games” in the history of the Olympics. Unless, that is, you are a hijab-wearing woman competing for France. The doctrine of “laicite” – a French form of state secularism based on the idea of neutrality in the public arena ­– has led the government and the French Olympic Committee to ban French athletes from displaying any religious symbolism, including the hijab.

Confused? That’s not surprising. The Olympic charter guarantees the right of athletes to take part without discrimination, including against their religion. Muslim women from countries other than France who might choose to cover can take part in the Paris Olympics, putting French athletes in a uniquely restricted position.

This has led to scandalous and bizarre scenes. In the lead-up to the Paris Games, hijab-wearing French sprinter Sounkamba Sylla was in a row with the government over the matter. The “compromise” they finally reached, just before the opening ceremonies, was that Sylla was allowed to wear a blue baseball cap, during the ceremonies and while competing. Meanwhile, Afghan cyclist Masomah Ali Zadam, who lives in France as a refugee, has said she is grateful to be competing on the Olympic refugee team, where her right to cover is respected.

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France says its rules give Muslim women the chance for integration and, ultimately, freedom. But, of course, the idea that banning someone from choosing what to wear somehow makes them “freer” is a strange argument. And “neutrality”, in this line of thinking, is of course determined by those who have power and want to keep it.

The Olympics’ website says, “Paris 2024 is dedicated to setting the highest standards for gender equality in sport.” It speaks of “combatting discrimination”. But if the goal is for sport to be the great equaliser for friendship and respect, forcing or banning certain clothing purely on ideological grounds is as exclusionary as it gets. There is, by the way, no shortage of western secularists pointing that out over Iran’s practice of requiring its athletes to wear the hijab.

The idea that banning someone from choosing what to wear somehow makes them 'freer' is strange

And it is, indeed, on ideological grounds. The politicisation of the hijab is squarely aimed at Muslims. When Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman was approached by Nike to trial a more aerodynamic running suit that, for all intents and purposes, looks identical to what a female Muslim athlete might wear, the “swift suit” was labelled “iconic” and “chic”. It helped her win the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Cathy Freeman of Australia crosses the line to win the gold in the Women's 400m Final at the Olympic Stadium at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games on Sep 25, 2000. Allsport

Apart from violating the rights of female athletes, rules like these can have a hugely detrimental impact on long-standing efforts to encourage Muslim women and girls to compete in high-level sport. Women from the Muslim world often overcome enormous barriers to be able to compete on the world stage. Politicising and attaching shame to their appearance and identity once they get there is an undeniably harmful practice. And when hijab-wearing women do get to the elite level of sport, they can perform just as well as anyone else.

In 2016, fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first American athlete to wear hijab to the Olympics, and she went on to win the Olympic bronze medal. France has a strong history with this issue. In 2015, for the sake of the supposed gender egalitarianism and lack of religious pronouncements in the public sphere, Muslim girls were sent home from school for wearing long skirts.

Telling a woman anywhere else in the world that could her clothes be shorter because the public demands to see more of her body would be rightly condemned. Last year, another Muslim female student at a high school in Lyon was sent home for wearing a kimono (over a t-shirt and jeans), that was viewed by the school principal as "a long coat of a religious nature".

I hope one day non-Muslim female athletes – French and otherwise – will have the courage to cover in solidarity with their shamed and excluded Muslim colleagues. There is precedent. In 2021, the German women’s gymnastics team wore full-body suits in qualifications saying they wanted to promote freedom of choice and encourage women to wear what makes them feel comfortable.

At the time, Norwegian gymnast Julie Erichsen commented: “They have the guts to stand on such a huge arena and show girls all over the world you can wear whatever you want.”

While their actions were a protest against the sexualisation of the sport, their point about women having rights over their own bodies about what to wear and how to perform as an athlete still holds, as does the important role of solidarity and being role models to athletes and women everywhere.