What it was like to be a woman at the Qatar World Cup

Reem Al-Haddad is 23 years old, a data scientist, photographer and a Muslim woman wearing a hijab in a beautiful deep shade of teal.

During the World Cup, she and her brother stood in Souq Waqif, the popular marketplace in Doha, with a sign that said: “Ask us anything about Qatar.”

The questions came thick and fast — in person and then on social media. There were so many that she got her friends involved, both online and in person, to answer them too.

“Where do I buy a dress, an abaya, for my wife?”

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“Is it true that all Qataris have oil in their backyards?”

“Why do men wearing thobes (white robes) always look angry? Are they sad because of their wives?”

“What’s with the polygamy?”

“What do you think about alcohol? Would you like to try it?”

“Why do some women wear face coverings and some don’t?”

“Were you paid to do this?”

Reem attempted to answer them all (and no, she wasn’t paid to do it). And if she didn’t know, she tried to direct people to others who might know more. Her responses are explanations — many starting “in Islam…” or “in Qatar…” — rather than offering opinion or judgment.

“I feel so many people are curious about many things but they think we won’t answer or it will be strange to suddenly approach us,” she says softly. “So having a banner really helps people to feel this person is welcoming.

“We told them it’s a choice (to wear hijab). Many of them think we’re forced to wear it and we’re oppressed. We told them that we wear it because we feel modest wearing it and it makes us feel more protected and more feminine.

“I feel like it’s so important (to answer these kinds of questions) because all people hear is from parties who have not lived here. It’s important to hear from the local people — not necessarily Qataris but people who live here.”

Mehreen Fazal, a British Muslim woman from Wolverhampton who moved to Qatar with her husband and children two years ago, agrees.

“I think it’s incredibly important (to hear from people who live here),” she says. “Local voices need to be emphasised and we need a truer picture of the reality on the ground. I think it’s a great opportunity that we have for the world to see what Qatar is really about.

“It’s crucial to amplify women’s voices and to have women’s perspectives on sport and other issues to help change the narrative or show that women play a vital role.”

Reem was 11 when Qatar won the 2022 World Cup bid in 2010; old enough to know “Qatar had won something big” but not quite sure what it meant. Over the next 12 years she became increasingly aware that the country had the “goal of growing” in time to host the tournament.

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“Before the World Cup, we didn’t hear so many negative things,” she adds. “It was fine. But then, just before the World Cup started, we started hearing lots of things. It was a sudden thing, we never saw it coming. It was strange. We had conflicting feelings about it because we certainly felt like everyone was against us. It’s a bad feeling.

“So many people didn’t come. Some of them may not be able to come but some might have heard so much bad information from the media or they were scared because they felt that’s not the right place to go. I hope that perspective changes.”

This is something I too wrestled with before I went to Qatar to cover the World Cup for The Athletic, having been told what I might expect as a white woman working in a Muslim country with male guardianship rules that mean women need permission to marry or travel, for example. It didn’t sound like a barrel of laughs, to be honest. “Cover up, do as you’re told and you’ll be fine” seemed to be the general message.

But how would I get a sense of what it was like if I didn’t go? And how could I try to listen to other women’s perspectives if I did?

We talk about how Japan’s equaliser against Spain looked like it had clearly gone out of play in the stadium but then VAR deemed it had not when viewed from above.

“You see how different angles of view can have different meanings?” says Reem. “I just never expected the perspective to be so extreme.”

Trying to speak to Qatari women was not easy. It is a small place, with only around 380,000 Qatari citizens in a population approaching three million people. Clearly not every woman is as open to conversation as Reem and Meereen, who have taken part in a year-long storytelling project called GOALS.

Groups of women dressed all in black, either promenading down the Corniche, on the metro or in a restaurant, were unfailingly polite but did not want to speak, nor did I want to intrude.

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Lots of short chats, however, took place in women-only spaces, such as a nail salon and when washing hands in ladies’ toilets.

The phrase “the World Cup is amazing” was used frequently while women with expensive shoes and handbags took selfies in the mirrors. Many had attended games with their children and enjoyed the experience.

They wanted to know more about what I had thought of the tournament, and if I had enjoyed my time in Qatar. These questions were tinged with an anxiousness about how Qatar was being perceived around the world, and a frustration when told some people were still, at best, conflicted about the whole thing.

The women who clean those toilets did not want to speak beyond saying where they were from — Bangladesh, Pakistan or the Philippines, usually — and often looked scared if asked “How are you?”

If male migrant workers have been silenced during the tournament, these women are invisible.

What does a Qatari think, then, of the fans who dressed up in traditional Arab clothes, some in the colours of the countries they support?

Is that embracing a different culture, or mocking it?

“It’s so fun seeing them,” says Reem. “My brother goes to them and helps them fix their style. Seeing people curious to know about our culture… they really want to to learn about it and that’s a good thing.”

How does it feel to watch a football match in a hijab?

“I’ve felt so comfortable, so welcomed, so part of it all,” says Mehreen, who never felt able to attend a match when she lived in Wolverhampton. “It’s been eye-opening. It’s better than I thought it would be.

“In the UK, I would only see matches on the television or what my friends would say about it — this magical place where everyone goes! But I didn’t get that opportunity. But here, I’ve understood what that magic really means.”

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I realise I take that for granted. I had the same feeling when speaking to Iranian women early in the tournament; those taking immense risks to watch a football match and do something they cannot do at home.

And there’s me whinging about having to enter media areas using a separate line so a female security guard could body scan me, or being ushered about constantly and told how to cross the road, or looked past or ignored on occasion.

I was not particularly concerned about my physical safety — this is a country with a very low crime rate and people leave their homes and cars unlocked all the time — and I did feel very safe, even walking about late at night. Certainly a lot safer than in London, anyway.

Reem shot some images of Ian Wright, who was in Qatar working as a pundit, on the beach last week. She set everything up, went to take some images in a different location and then returned to find everything where she had left it.

“Ian’s agent was like, ‘These are your things? You just left them here, for more than one hour?’,” she says. “Yes! That’s the best thing here.”

The crowds were very different to Euro 2020, for example, too. No booze within stadiums was a contributory factor, of course, but the make-up of fans was far more diverse too, with lots of women and babes in arms and fewer younger men.

The same cannot be said for the press box, however. Television screens and radio stations are full of female talent but the written side seems to be getting worse, if anything. FIFA did not respond to repeated requests for the percentage of accredited written journalists who are female or non-binary, but the eye test tells me it would have been in single figures.

For the women who did come, we were largely asked:

“Where are you from?”

“Are you enjoying the World Cup?”

“Are you married?”

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(If the answer to the last question was “yes”, the conversation tended to end very swiftly and politely.)

I only felt uncomfortable once, when I offered my hand to a Qatari man to whom I was introduced. He took a step back, said “no, no” and then explained in his religion it was not thought appropriate to shake a woman’s hand if we were not married.

I said I was sorry if I had offended him and asked what greeting he would have preferred. A little bow of the head and placing my hand on my own chest would be better, he said.

He did not ask what I would have preferred.

(Top image: Reem Al-Haddad)

Reem: https://www.goal-click.com/football-photography-stories/finding-a-new-community

Mehreen: https://www.goal-click.com/football-photography-stories/my-football-journey-as-a-british-asian-woman

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