Keep walking: the World Cup, politics and women

The World Cup is over for almost a week now. People are now dealing with “game abstinence”. Or the five stages of grief, depending on how much involved with it you were.

I’m not really a football person (my go-to sport being volleyball), but it was impossible to not be involved in the World Cup atmosphere. I even found myself commenting on games, football tactics and the whole nine yards after the now historic Brazil defeat to Germany. A game so surreal that not even Dali could have thought of. But I digress.

Just before the final, I received the following text (bear in mind that in Portuguese, Germany is “Alemanha”):

“The winner of this World Cup is a country who starts with the letter A, whose capital starts with the letter B, it’s headed by a woman, has already hosted and won the World Cup by beating Netherlands in the final and has also won the Cup abroad. The winner was also in a war with the UK in the last century and currently has a living Pope”

Leaving aside the many amusing parallels that I had never thought of between Germany and Argentina, the point that stuck with me was the “headed by women”. In a world so dominated by the masculine – being that the sports world or the politics – it is quite interesting to observe that the main political figures on that stage were women. I could not find evidence to fully prove this, but I do believe it is a first. Even with Cristina Kirchner’s absence (which is a shame – could you imagine the photo?!), she still is the highest political figure in Argentina. And Angela Merkel was there, alongside Dilma Rousseff.

I wish I could say that this reflects that women are finally free to occupy and fulfil all their potential, be that whatever it is. I wish I could say that girls all over the world can rest assured that they will be treated equally and have the same chance as men to get to that position of power. I wish. The truth is that this is still an exception – and the greatest proof is that people – me very much included – were surprised by this fact.

Yes, there is still a lot that needs to be done. But, thankfully, some people are doing it. Women can now be bishops in the Church of England (a long overdue move considering that the Church itself is headed by a woman for quite some time). London recently hosted the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, another important – and long overdue – step. DFID’s work includes various important steps. The latest step is the Girl Summit, hosted by the UK government next week.

Steps may seem like very little, but that’s what a long walk is made of. We just need to keep walking.