Meet the speakers: “Why do we accept an enormous amount of inequality in sport?” 

What motivated you to help evacuate Afghanistan’s women cricketers? 

I was inspired by the story that investigative journalist Tracy Holmes broke in the Australian media about the Afghan women’s football team getting out of Afghanistan on the very last Australian military flight.  

I was teaching a subject at the University of Canberra called 'Sports Integrity, Ethics and Law', so I reached out to Tracy and all the other women who were involved and said: “How can my class be helpful to the Afghan women’s football team when they arrive in Australia?”

Tracy called me straight back and she said: “The football team is fine. But there is another team that needs help. Can you help get the Afghan women’s cricket team out of Afghanistan?” When I asked her how she thought I could do that, she said: “Find a way”.

How many Afghan women cricketers did you help evacuate? 

Nineteen players, their families, the staff and their families. The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) had contracted 25 women players, which enabled them to demonstrate to the International Cricket Council (ICC) that they were eligible to be admitted as a full member. The irony is that having those contracts was enormously useful for us to be able to go to the Australian government and seek humanitarian visas.  
 
A few of the players and staff had already escaped to the UK, Canada, and the US. We were able to contact 19 players through the three who had the best English.  

In the end, we evacuated more than 130 people, because we wanted each team member to leave with their whole family, in so far as that was possible. In the case of the football team, the players had to leave most of their family members behind, and that was, of course, extremely traumatic. 

Where does the fight for recognition of Afghanistan’s women cricketers stand right now? 

There has been a huge amount of pressure put on the ICC to do something for the Afghan women who are displaced around the world. In April 2025, the ICC announced that it would be setting up a task force and a financial support fund for displaced Afghan women cricketers in partnership with the cricket boards of Australia, England, and India.  

However, questions remain about whether this support will translate into formal recognition and competitive opportunities. The Afghan women cricketers are not allowed to play as a representative team of Afghanistan because the ICC only recognises teams nominated by their member federations, and the ACB no longer recognises the Afghan women’s cricket team due to the Taliban government's policy of banning women from all public participation, including sport. 

In 2028, cricket will be reintroduced at the Olympic Games. What are the chances that Afghanistan’s women’s cricket team will participate in the Los Angeles Olympics? 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a refugee team, but the members of the team all participate in individual sports. We have not yet had a situation where the IOC has recognised refugees in a team sport, such as cricket, football, basketball, or handball.

For the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, only six men’s teams and six women’s teams will each play in the T20 format. Given the strength of the game worldwide, you can imagine that if you introduced a refugee team to ‘take’ a spot from one of the top six teams, that would be enormously problematic.

However, it would send a very strong message if Afghan women cricketers were allowed to participate in the Olympic selection events, either as a designated Afghan women’s cricket team or as part of a broader refugee cricket team with other displaced players. 

What can the world of sport learn from such an extreme example of exclusion of women? 

Afghanistan is the most extreme example of gender apartheid. Another example of gender-based oppression has been in place in Iran for almost half a century. Iranian women are restricted in what they wear if they are permitted to participate in sport at all. Even the opportunity to purchase tickets or enter stadiums to watch, much less as a journalist or photographer, has only rarely been permitted by the Iranian authorities.  
 
I think we can learn lessons from these extreme examples if we ask ourselves how we would respond if we flipped the tables. If we suddenly said, “Men from Denmark are no longer allowed to play handball, but women are,” our hair would be on fire, and we would say, “That’s outrageous. What message are we sending to our young boys and men? This is not fair. This is not right. This is not a society we want to live in.”  
 
We accept an enormous amount of inequality in sport, tiptoeing around the issue by saying it's culture, it's historic, or religious, and so on. It’s complete nonsense and entirely unacceptable. We need to get past our discomfort and give everybody the opportunity to play and govern the sports they love and that we all want to see played.  
 
The Afghan situation of gender apartheid is the thin end of the wedge, and the rest of us in sport are complicit if we continue to allow the inequality that currently exists. 

Do you see any signs of change? 

Yes, the big change is that the International Olympic Committee now has its first female president in Kirsty Coventry. This sends a strong message to all women and girls in sport when the top leadership position is currently occupied by a woman. And not just that, Coventry is from Zimbabwe. This fact is also hugely important for marginalised women across the world, as Olympic sport governance has traditionally been dominated by European representatives. 

But even with gender equality in sport management, how does sport solve a problem like the Taliban in Afghanistan? 

Yes, that’s the million-dollar question that everybody would like to have answered, isn’t it?

Sport is only one institution in our communities, and quite often I have been concerned over the decades that I have been working in this space to see that there is so much pressure and expectation on sport to be able to achieve political solutions over tyrannical dictatorships and corrupt governments.  

To expect sports organisations to overthrow a government that is infringing on the human rights of its citizens, including sports, is too much of an ask. But sport is powerful, and it should play an important part in standing up for the rights of people.   

The IOC and the international federations can advocate publicly and through diplomatic channels for the rights of all Afghan women and girls. To support Afghan women locked inside Afghanistan and displaced around the world, sports organisations can work with governments and philanthropists to provide financial, legal, and humanitarian support for their education and sporting goals.  

Sport can give voice to the voiceless, and I think that we all must play a role in that.