Afghanistan | SEW Sports Equality for Women

Afghanistan women’s national team plays first competitive match in exile

by admin | Apr 27, 2022 | Representation, SEW

Eight months after being forced to flee for their lives as the Taliban seized control of their homeland, the Afghanistan women’s national team marked another monumental step in their journey on Sunday, officially returning to competitive football. Read...

An Afghan girls soccer team rebelled to play the game they love. Now they’re refugees

by admin | Jan 10, 2022 | Representation, SEW

The teenage girls in the red jerseys and black hijabs huddle close on the chilly pitch in this soccer-crazy city and chant their team’s name. “We are Ayenda!” they shout out, using the word for future in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian. “We...

Safe and alive, but ‘traumatized,’ the future of these Afghan women footballers is very uncertain

by admin | Nov 29, 2021 | Representation, SEW

They are safe and alive, and have the prospect of new lives in the United Kingdom, but for 130 Afghan female football players and their families it’s an existence still full of uncertainty. When the Taliban seized control in mid-August as the United States and...

Kim Kardashian West helps fly Afghanistan women’s soccer team to safety in London

by admin | Nov 19, 2021 | Representation, SEW

Members of Afghanistan’s women’s youth development soccer team arrived in Britain early Thursday after being flown from Pakistan with the help of a New York rabbi, Premier League side Leeds United and Kim Kardashian West. A plane chartered by the reality...

Afghan girls soccer team granted asylum in Portugal

by admin | Sep 22, 2021 | Representation, SEW

The girls on Afghanistan’s national soccer team have arrived safely in Portugal where they have been granted asylum after weeks of waiting to flee the country following the Taliban takeover. The girls found out early Sunday that they would be leaving Afghanistan...

Nadia Nadim: ‘I’m actually the picture of everything the Taliban don’t want their women to be’

by admin | Sep 11, 2021 | Representation, SEW

Nadia Nadim remembers the moment she fell in love with football. She was in Denmark when she saw some girls kicking a ball around on a field, uninhibited. “That’s the first time I got to see that girls actually did play football at the schools. And right...

Afghanistan’s Women’s Soccer Team Knew It Had to Get Out. ‘Burn Your Jerseys.’

by admin | Sep 4, 2021 | Representation, SEW

The first voice message was from a 16-year-old forward, knee-deep in a trench filled with sewage and panicking in the crowds swarming Hamid Karzai International Airport. “We are desperate,” she cried over the clamor of gunfire and coughing children. “I cannot stand on...

Players from Afghan women’s national soccer team evacuated from Kabul

by admin | Aug 26, 2021 | Representation, SEW

Players from the Afghan women’s national soccer team have been evacuated from Kabul amid the recent Taliban takeover. In a statement on Tuesday, FIFPRO, a global soccer players union, thanked the Australian government for helping evacuate the women’s national team and...