Saudi Arabia: Women's sport in focus after latest HRW report

A newly published, 95-page Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) has revealed how the sovereign wealth fund has "facilitated and benefited from human rights abuses" and how sportswashing has helped "to whitewash reputational harm."

The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Finals were held in Riyadh in November, the first installment of a three-year agreement. The prize money was $5.15 million (€4.87 million) for the tournament, matching that of the ATP Finals. This meant for the first time ever, the women's and men's year-end champions earned the same reward.

The sums of money being poured into golf, football and motor racing in Saudi Arabia have also been astoundingly high, too. As demand grows for more professionalism within women's sports across multiple disciplines, the significant financial incentives being offered by the PIF are hard to turn down, especially in a sporting landscape where women's teams often struggle for funding, sponsorships and visibility.

"Investing in women's sports sends great signals to both the domestic Saudi population and the rest of the world that they are doing great stuff for women," Stanis Elsborg, head of Play the Game — an initiative promoting democracy, transparency and freedom of expression in world sport — told DW.

"Which then leads to more or less or no discussion about the continued human rights abuses of women in the country."

Reality different for women in Saudi Arabia

While the push for equality is supposedly evident, women in Saudi Arabia continue to live under strict male guardianship laws.

The system requires women to obtain permission from a male relative — usually a father, husband or brother — for many aspects of their lives, including marriage, travel and sometimes access to health care or education.

Even after recent incremental progress for women in Saudi Arabia, problems remain.

"There are still a number of women's rights defenders, either in prison or under house arrest, serving long prison sentences for social media posts advocating for women's rights," Minky Worden, HRW's director of global initiatives, told DW.

Worden also believes the male guardianship system might have played a role in the poor crowd numbers for the WTA Finals in Riyadh.

"Moreover, the WTA did not do the work to make it safe for their players, because their players were being questioned about the women in jail. That's not right," Worden said.

"The players should have been concentrating on playing their best game, not worrying about whether a journalist is going to ask them why they aren't doing more to get women's rights defenders out of jail."

Earlier in 2024, former tennis legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova wrote an open letter to WTA chief Steve Simon saying hosting the finals in Saudi Arabia "would represent a significant step backwards" and that it was "entirely incompatible with the spirit and purpose of women's tennis and the WTA itself."

Eventual tournament winner Coco Gauff admitted she had her "reservations" about playing in Saudi Arabia, citing the country's treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community. Gauff said she was hopeful the WTA's presence in Saudi Arabia for the next three years would help introduce more Saudi women to tennis and "enact more equality."

Women central to much-publicized Saudi Vision 2030

Since 2018, Saudi Arabia's PIF has invested billions of euros into men's sports, and the country look set to host the 2034 men's FIFA World Cup. The decision to diversify toward investing in women's sports appears an equally considered move.

Women are central to the much-publicized Saudi Vision 2030, the country's ambitious blueprint for economic and social reform, spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A key goal of the plan is to empower women to contribute more significantly to Saudi society and its workforce.

Currently, though, as the HRW report found, there is no evidence that "PIF-funded projects advanced the government's obligations to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights of its people."

"I do believe that they have an interest in getting more women to do sports in Saudi Arabia and get a healthier population," said Elsborg.

"I also think that one of the key factors behind their sport strategy is that they really don't want people to talk about the lack of women's or LGBTQ+ rights. They want us to talk about all the good things that they do for world sport and that they do for women's sports as well."

While the increased remuneration remains attractive, many female athletes have raised their voices against Saudi Arabia's involvement in women's sports.

In October, in response to an announcement that FIFA was entering into a partnership with Saudi Arabia's state oil company Aramco, over 100 international players signed an open letter criticizing the deal as a betrayal of women's sports values and human rights. The group suggested including female athletes on decision-making boards for future partnerships.​

"Players have no say when it comes to sponsorships and partnerships and that's one of the big problems," Elsborg said.

"What the players expressed in their letter to FIFA about having a review committee, where the players could have more say about sponsorships their organizations have, could possibly be a way forward for women's sport."

Edited by: Jonathan Harding