Alumna to share thoughts on challenges facing young women

By Jayne Denker

Ayub

wista Ayub ’01 had planned on being a chemist. Instead, she’s found herself at the forefront of a movement to empower young women half a world away, in her native country of Afghanistan.

Shortly after Ayub completed her Take Five year at Rochester, the 2001 recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Prize and founder of Rochester’s women’s ice hockey team established the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange, a program that helps organize women’s soccer teams in her native country.

Ayub, who emigrated to the United States with her family in 1979, at the onset of the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, always dreamed of bridging the cultures of her home country and her adopted one. That dream, coupled with her desire to help young women succeed, inspired her to start the sports program in a country ravaged by war for decades.

“I grew up playing sports [here in the U.S.], but kids in Afghanistan didn’t have that opportunity for 30 years,” she says.

The Future of Feminism

In her new book, Out of the Box, journalist Lynn Sherr talks about the challenges she faced breaking into the male-dominated world of news reporting in the 1970s and early 1980s. She will share her story as the keynote speaker during a luncheon and will also lead a panel discussion with young women to examine the future of feminism during the 2006 Stanton/Anthony Conversations on Friday, October 6.

“Her talk provides a perfect context for our panel of women to share the challenges they’ve faced and examine if those challenges have changed in the past few decades,” says Nora Bredes, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership, which is sponsoring both events. “Ultimately, perhaps this conversation will allow us to arrive at a consensus about the challenges ahead.”

Panelists include Awista Ayub ’01, founder of the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange (read more above); Crystal Lander, the program director for the Feminist Majority Foundation; Dawn Lundry Martin, founder of the Third Wave Foundation; and Julianne Nigro ’09, secretary of the Women’s Caucus at Rochester.

“Today many people assume that because women make up more than half the undergraduates at colleges across the country, sexism on campuses must have ended long ago. I think it is important for people begin to understand that, unfortunately, this is not the case,” says Nigro. “Women are still underrepresented at many research universities in both the student body and the faculty. And although women are obtaining bachelor’s degrees in greater numbers than men, this shift hasn’t translated to the workforce, where college-educated women earn only 72 cents to every dollar that a college-educated man makes.”

Bredes says she hopes the discussion will be a forum for young women to reflect on the progress that has been made in recent decades but also identify the gaps that remain.

“What’s enough? If you consider the progress made since Susan B. Anthony and her vision for gender equality, certainly we are being equally educated, but what are women doing with that education? What’s our place in the world right now?” asks Bredes.

Nigro says she hopes she and other women in her generation can begin to answer that question and move closer to Anthony’s vision of true gender equality.

What’s even more important, Ayub says, is that “playing sports builds self-esteem and self-awareness, especially in girls.” In fact, she notes, Afghan girls were accepted into the program based on their leadership potential more than their soccer skills.

Ayub will share her experiences and thoughts about the challenges young women face in the 21st century by participating in Meliora Weekend’s 2006 Stanton/Anthony Conversations on Friday, October 6. Hosted by news correspondent Lynn Sherr, this year’s roundtable will examine “The Future of Feminism.”

The program is sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership at the University and is named for suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. The Conversations are part of the Anthony Center’s yearlong initiative, “100 Years Since Susan B. . . . Consider the Anthony Legacy,” which included events and programs celebrating women’s achievements since the suffragist died in 1906. This year’s panel is a follow-up to last year’s group that featured successful women over the age of 50 discussing the challenges they faced as professional women.

Ayub will most likely have much to share during this year’s Conversation: Within a year of its founding, her Afghan Youth Sports Exchange brought the first international girls’ soccer team to the United States from Kabul for the 2004 International Children’s Games. In just two years, the number of girls’ teams in Kabul has grown to 15, and two players received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2006 ESPN Espys.

In addition, last spring, four coaches traveled to Afghanistan to organize a girls’ soccer clinic in Kabul, where they worked with more than 250 girls through the Afghanistan National Olympic Committee.

Ayub has won international recognition for her efforts; in June, she was named Glamour magazine’s Hero of the Month, and in July, she was named ABC News’ Person of the Week.

Ayub, the education and health officer at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., calls the players “ambassadors for athletics” and told ABC News that they are the “key to create positive social change.” And although she acknowledges that the country is still in transition, Ayub continues to work to give young Afghan women opportunities for change.

After all, she says, “It’s my country, my culture.”