Sania attended Press Club Odisha event

Ace tennis player, Sania Mirza was at Bhubaneswar on Sunday. She was invited by The Press Club of Odisha to participate in an event arranged by them at Mayfair Hotel. She was the chief guest here to speak on “Women in Sports – The Way Ahead”.

Talking about the challenges women face in sports and otherwise, Sania said the most important change required was in the attitude. “Both the attitude of people towards women and our own attitude towards ourselves and other women need to change. That is the first requisite for women in India to make the best of their talent,” she said.

“When a woman wants to do something on her own way, she is criticised, dubbed as a rebel. I (too) was stated an arrogant. However, I stuck to my guns and today I am at this place. We have to fight in order to move forward in this men’s world,” Sania said.

Advising women sportspersons not to pay any heed to such criticism, she stressed on the need for change in the attitude of individuals, media and nation at large for the growth and development of women in sports.

Mentioning how everybody talked about the cricketers of both India and Australia when their ODI was washed away due to rains in Cuttack, she said, “I have never seen anybody writing about the same thing in any women sports.”

Sania, India’s highest ranked tennis player ever in singles (her best being world No. 27), reminisced that as a kid, when she used to play tennis the whole day, her relatives would tell her parents that she would grow dark and then would not get a good partner for marriage when she grew up.

“They would say, ‘She is not going to play Wimbledon! Why are you letting her toil?’ In fact, women are not even considered to be serious when they say they wish to pursue sports as a career,” she said.

“I was lucky to have supportive parents,” she said, adding that every girl should be allowed to choose her career. “If she wishes to make a career in athletics, she must do so,” she said. Sania was here with her parents Imran and Naseema Mirza.

Cricketer-turned-bureaucrat C.T.M. Suguna, who is also a painter, photographer and dancer, also took part in the event.