Joan McAlpine: Amid the noise and fury, there is only silence on the rights of women of Qatar

As the men’s World Cup kicks off in Qatar next week, there is much anxiety about the poor human rights record of the host nation.

An effective campaign has highlighted the state’s hostility towards gay people. Same-sex relationships are criminalised with a potential jail term of up to five years. Religious Sharia courts technically have the power to sentence men to death for same-sex acts.

Appalling as this might be, it is not an isolated example – many countries have similar discriminatory laws. If Fifa cared, Qatar should never have been awarded the tournament and participating nations should have done something before now.

But rapid advances in gay rights in liberal Western countries, with equal marriage, the growth of Pride events and the development of LGBT+ campaign groups, mean countries like Qatar seem medieval.

Amidst all this protest you might have thought that the rights of women would merit some attention – their freedom to be themselves, love who they want and be free from violence is also greatly compromised in Qatar. But there is silence.

Earlier this year a woman raped in Qatar was charged with engaging in “extra-marital sex”, when the man claimed she consented. She faced a sentence of seven years in prison and 100 lashes.

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Paola Schietekat was working as an economist for the World Cup Organising Committee when a man entered her apartment and assaulted her. The Qatari police demanded she undergo a virginity test, interrogated her for three hours and took her phone. A lawyer suggested she could escape jail if she married her rapist. Not surprisingly, she had to flee the country. There are several similar cases involving European women in recent years.

All of this suggests female football fans are unsafe in Qatar. But I struggle to recall any advice, campaigning, any conversation, around this. Women in Qatar require a male guardian’s permission to marry, study abroad, drive (until very recently), travel and receive reproductive healthcare.

“What the whole world experienced (in lockdown) is normal life for girls in Qatar,” one woman told Human Rights Watch in 2020.

Domestic violence and marital rape are not crimes in Qatar. Men can divorce at will and take four wives. Woman can only divorce if they have a “legitimate reason”, and even if they have custody of their children, are not allowed to be their legal guardians.

Why is this not on the national news? Where are the national teams making slick videos about it? Why is there no armband for players saying, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights?”

Women are not a minority – they are more than half the population, except in countries where misogyny is so ingrained that sex-selective abortion reduces the number of females born.

All the same, the greater number of women overall means they face discrimination on a far greater scale. So where’s the outcry? Do some people think women have already won their battles? Or is female equality a bit boring compared to the struggles of more newsworthy minorities? Or are our lobbying organisations not as effective?

For years, women visiting countries like Qatar have been told to “moderate” their dress and behaviour, to respect “local customs”. When a UK minister suggested gay fans do this, there was an immediate, understandable backlash. If we applied this zero tolerance to the treatment of women in other countries, we’d have to take on the world.

We’d also have to abandon old arguments about cultural and religious “sensitivities” or not imposing “Western values” on other countries. Maybe it’s time – the young women in Iran removing their hijabs show us the way.

We should be inspired by their bravery instead of kicking the human rights of women into the long grass.

Joan McAlpine is a journalist, commentator and former MSP