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This year’s Olympics is widely hailed as the most progressive in the 125-year history of the event. Early media reports on the eve of the Olympics focused on the fact that almost half of the participants were women-the first time since the international event was held in Athens, Greece in 1896.
However, the headlines were quickly replaced by German female gymnasts choosing radical sportswear. These reports tried to challenge the expected bikini-cut tights. The team’s long-sleeved, long-legged tights attracted global media attention, and one of the participants said it was to “show that every woman, everyone, should decide what to wear.” They are praised for ignoring the often revealing uniforms that female athletes usually wear, and some feel “uncomfortable or even sexy.”
Although the actions taken by the German athletes are symbolic, the dialogue around this initiative, the intentions of the gymnasts and their influence is limited to the small world of the Olympic movement. This is a missed opportunity to expand public dialogue on this issue, especially for Germany, which has been targeting women’s dress choices for many years.
For 15 years, German Muslim women have been fighting with local authorities and federal states to systematically stipulate what they can and cannot wear in public. It only makes sense to let the German public pay attention to this long-term struggle and honestly discuss how all women have the right to choose their clothes.
Although German Muslims have faced discrimination for decades, women especially began to feel pressure from the state in the 2000s. In 2005, Berlin local authorities passed the “Berlin Neutrality Act”, prohibiting civil servants and public sector workers from using religious symbols and clothing. Of course, this has the greatest impact on Muslim women wearing hijabs. Since then, Muslim women have waged years of legal battles over their right to wear a veil in the workplace.
In 2015, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the total prohibition of Muslim teachers from wearing headscarves violated their freedom of belief, but this did not prevent the federal states from adopting and maintaining various restrictive measures. Today, about half of the country’s 16 federal states have some kind of restriction on the face and headscarf.
In 2017, the German Parliament voted to ban civil servants from wearing veils, such as veils and burqas. In 2018, a Muslim woman was banned from teaching at an elementary school in Berlin for wearing a hijab. The local court upheld this decision.
In 2020, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the ban on Muslim trainee lawyers on the grounds that it protected religious neutrality. Therefore, people who choose to wear a headscarf must not represent the state or judicial institutions in any way, from collecting evidence from witnesses to presiding in court sessions, or even just observing them as trainees in the bench.
Then, in May this year, the upper house of the German parliament passed legislation prohibiting public sector workers from wearing religious symbols, including headscarves. Then it was promulgated as a law in July. The German Muslim Coordinating Council (KRM) explained, “[i]In practice, it will especially affect Muslim women wearing hijabs regardless of their qualifications or seniority.”
In July, when the European Court of Justice ruled on two Muslim women seeking justice because they were fired by private employers for wearing hijabs, the Muslim women in Germany lost another lawsuit. Many people worry that this decision will further normalize and legitimize Islamophobia, which is an important indicator of the current political reality of Muslim women throughout Europe.
Against the background that the German national and local authorities systematically deprived Muslim women of the right to choose clothes, the position of the German gymnastics team in the Olympics was not used as an opportunity for the whole society to discuss the topic, which is very disappointing. .
The fundamental problem is that any and all gender-based oppression should be opposed, and neither the State nor the Olympic Committee should decide or define what women wear at work, sporting events or leisure.
This unwillingness to link the different struggles against women’s oppression has caused national and international organizations to cover up women’s rights issues. For example, the Olympic Committee has been concerned about the number of female participants, but failed to solve the numerous problems faced by women during the Olympics, from sexual misconduct to insufficient support for breastfeeding mothers.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to link the struggles in the sports world with the struggles in daily life. An inspiring example of how to do this is Les Hijabeuses, a French Muslim women’s group, which is accepting the French Football Association’s ban on any official football game wearing a veil.
The French government’s war against Muslims has had a disproportionate impact on women, which can be felt in sports and public places. But these young women and their allies refused to remain silent or were kicked off the court. They are opposing that the French government removes Muslim women wearing hijabs from public view by creating spaces for girls and women to play and be active in public.
In Germany, Muslim women have also mobilized to defend their rights. Therefore, for the German gymnastics team-and all other individuals or groups that want to oppose Germany’s gender-based oppression-it is easy to find allies who have been engaged in such activities for a long time.
National organizations such as the Muslim Women’s League and the German Muslim Coordinating Committee have been fighting for a long time, opposing their warning that it is not just Muslim policies and practices that affect them.
Similarly, the Bündnis #GegenBerufsverbot (Union against Occupational Bans) led the campaign against the hijab ban in employment and the discriminatory nature of the Berlin Neutrality Act, all of which were carried out in the context of the growing extreme right and even occupying seats in parliament.
There are approximately 5.5 million Muslims in Germany. Ignoring the rights of Muslim women would make any campaign for gender equality incomplete at best. From sports fields to Olympics, from tights to headscarves, from sports fields to workplaces, the simple truth of the feminist slogan is still a powerful slogan: our body, our choice.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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