Redux
Every journey circles home
I would like to begin with a sincere thank-you to Donald Trump. Truly. Because nothing clarifies the need for women in politics faster than watching powerful men look at the rubble of the Gaza Strip, after years of starvation, displacement, and trauma, and conclude that the most pressing reconstruction priority is… football.
According to the proposal, FIFA will seek to raise $75 million for football-related projects. Stadiums. Fields. Youth programmes. Which is lovely, in the abstract. Sport can heal communities. It can create hope. It can build bridges. But timing, as they say, is everything. And when children are malnourished, hospitals are flattened, and humanitarian workers have spent months being bombarded and even killed while trying to deliver aid in impossible conditions, the optics of “what shall we do with $75 million for football” are spectacularly tone-deaf. And really, $75 million for football in Gaza? That is not even pocket change for the world’s top players. If the ten highest-paid footballers each chipped in a million, FIFA’s target would be met before lunch, pfffff.
And what would you expect? We all saw the family photo of the board meeting. It looked like a football team, all boys under their coach, the planetarch patriarch, blowing his whistle and barking instructions while they shuffled in formation. The board itself was mostly men, if not entirely men. One cannot help but wonder how different the priorities, and the tone, might have been if women had been in the room.
It does not help that the broader initiative has reportedly been unveiled with the atmosphere of a political rally, with music, jokes, flattery, and personality-driven theatrics. One cannot help wondering if a woman leader staged diplomacy this way, praising appearances, cracking anecdotes, blending spectacle with policy, would she be described as charismatic or dismissed as unserious, emotional, or unprofessional. Oh well, the double standard writes itself.
This is not really about football. It is about imagination. Or rather, the lack of it.
Because a more diverse leadership table might have produced different first instincts. Someone might have asked what do families need before they need a pitch. How do we rebuild schools, clinics, water systems. How do we support the volunteers, many of them women, who have been holding communities together with nothing but courage, improvisation, and WhatsApp groups. How do we protect aid workers instead of memorialising them. Perhaps the months when humanitarian staff were risking, and losing, their lives would have been the moment to bring them into the planning, to listen to their expertise rather than arriving later with grand projects.
There is a reason care work, community organising, and volunteer networks are often described as the “feminine” side of politics. Not because women are biologically kinder -that cliché helps no one- but because societies have historically pushed women into roles where survival depends on cooperation, empathy, and resourcefulness. When those perspectives enter decision-making, priorities shift. Security is not just tanks, reconstruction is not just concrete and Peace is not a treaty. There is trauma, support, a hug... peace is finally start giving back the lost dignity. So, wars do not end because stadiums exist. They end when human needs are centred, when grievances are addressed, when communities feel seen rather than managed. Right now, the message is that dam dollahs can fix everything. Build something big, cut a ribbon, take a photo.”
Football might eventually help heal Gaza. One day children should absolutely play again. But, if leadership continues to be dominated by the same patriarchal instincts, prestige projects first, human realities later, we will keep mistaking symbolism for solutions.
So yes, thank you, Mr Trump. You may have unintentionally made the strongest argument yet for why politics needs more women, and more diversity of every kind, at the table where decisions are made.