We congratulate the members of Bangladesh’s U-19 Women’s Football Team for clinching the 2021 SAFF U19 Women’s Championship defeating India (1-0) in a Dhaka stadium on Wednesday in the final. Getting a well-calculated cross from Shaheda Akter Ripa in the 35th minute of the second half, a long-range perfect shot by Anai Mogini made history for Bangladesh. Obviously, all the teen booters deserve warm felicitation for their outstanding performances when we have very little achievement in other fields to be recognized internationally. We do believe that SAFF U-19 Women’s Championship victory will certainly encourage the Bangladesh Football Federation — which is apparently very shaky in taking brave decisions regarding the women — to take more initiatives for the improvement of football.
Like in other sectors, the women reportedly have to face various obstacles in the sports sector too. They are deprived of many facilities including modern training. They earn too small amount of salary than their male counterparts. A male booter is several times richer. Even so, the women have earned the SAFF Championship, which is still a daydream to our male team. Not only in football, the Bangladesh women’s team made history this year also by achieving excellent results in cricket T20Is. They stunned the world by lifting the Asia Cup trophy defeating six-time champion India. They also managed a maiden bilateral series win
defeating Ireland 2-1 in the three-match T20I series and maintained their winning trend in the Netherlands. What’s very interesting is that they joined the Asia Cup tournament as an underdog but won the cup! The Bangladesh female football team won the SAFF U-18 and the Bangladesh female team also became the group champion in the AFC U-16 group.
But it’s a matter of great disappointment that the women’s success in several forms of sports is yet to be recognized though sports could be an effective tool for women empowerment. In Bangladesh, the women are given the posts but that does mean they are empowered. They are abused to make them subservient. In fact the whole society is disempowered. Still we shall go on encouraging the fight spirit among our younger both girls and boys.
