Bedford activist Lipa Nessa joins forces with Sweaty Betty to launch sports hijab in schools

As we mark International Women’s Day today (Friday), Bedford sports activist Lipa Nessa has joined forces with the Sweaty Betty Foundation to launch a new sports hijab.

It will go into schools to allow more girls to participate in sport and activities, and preserve their modesty.

The Sweaty Betty Foundation spoke to teenage girls across the UK, and discovered the hijab can be a barrier to girls participating in sports, with some schools deeming it unsafe to wear and requiring school girls to remove their hijab in their PE lessons.

So, together with Bedford’s very own Lipa Nessa, Sweaty Betty has created a new sports hijab, with all profits going to the Sweaty Betty Foundation.

Formally a semi-professional footballer and now a grassroots coach and National Youth Board member for several sports boards, Lipa is a powerful voice for positive change and has the dream: “To change the world with a hijab on her head and a ball at her feet.”

Blending fashion with function, the new sports hijab has been carefully designed with hidden banding so that it stays put even with active movement, while different fastenings offer the wearer multiple ways to wear the hijab, allowing it to fit with their own personal style. Lipa and Sweaty Betty worked with girls from the This Girl Can initiative in Leeds for the redesign.

The foundation will also be donating a set number of hijabs every year to girls across the UK to empower and inspire them to get active.

Research carried out by Sport England in 2019 found Muslim women are more likely to be inactive than other women.

Meanwhile, a report published by England’s largest Muslim women’s sports charity, Muslimah Sports Association (MSA) in 2023 found 97% of British Muslim women surveyed wanted to increase their current participation in sports, while 37% are not involved in any sports or activities.