nike pro hijab case study

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

First page of “Nike unveils Muslim women athletes”

Download Free PDF

Nike unveils Muslim women athletes

2019, Feminist Media Studies

We analyze the Nike Pro Hijab Spring 2018 marketing campaign and how it commodifies a product intended for Muslim women consumers to make it palatable to white audiences. Although Muslim designers have been selling sports hijabs for over a decade, the Nike marketing team positions the Nike Pro Hijab as cutting-edge and innovative by targeting professional athletes. The Nike Pro Hijab advertisements and websites discursively reconstruct Muslim women’s gender to mark the Muslim athletic body as secular and therefore safe. To this end, the Nike Pro Hijab marketing campaign circulates rhetorics of blackness to recast the Muslim woman body as athletic, and thus able to participate in national identity performance. Through our analysis, we establish how the Nike Pro Hijab marketing campaign deploys whiteness to render Muslim bodies and texts safe, palatable, and “moderate” in an increasingly anti- Muslim landscape in the United States.

Chapter 5: Just Wear It: Media Coverage of the Nike Pro Hijab

First Online: 19 November 2020

Cite this chapter

Adrianne Grubic 5

Part of the book series: New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures ((NFDPSC))

849 Accesses

When Nike announced, in 2017, that it made a Pro Hijab, it touted how empowering it would be for Muslim female athletes. The garment won the most important design of the year in the 2017 Innovation by Design Awards and was also named one of 2017’s best inventions by Time magazine. However, Nike was not the first to make a hijab for female athletes. This study examines how the media reported on the global launch of the Nike Pro Hijab and what language was imparted in that coverage.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info
Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Introduction

Commitment 9: Give Your Value Proposition the Four Design Drivers

Sports IT and Digital Wellness:

Ahmed, S. (2017). Nike’s Pro Hijab: A great leap into modest sportswear, but they’re not the first. The Guardian .

Google Scholar

Associated Press. (2017). Nike launches a hijab for Muslim female athletes. News.com.au

Banks, B. (2017). Why Nike’s ‘Pro Hijab’ is more than just politics. Fortune .

Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Busnaina, I. (2014). Fashion marketing in Arab world: Brand identity vs. adaptation. Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management, 9 (1), p1.

Coaston, J. (2018). Nike has made billions selling rebellion to young people. Vox.com

Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism . Routledge.

Davidson, K. A. (2017). Nike Pro Hijab gives important validation to Muslim women athletes. EspnW .

Downes, S. (2017). Nike’s sports hijab has won a major design award. Emirates Woman .

Elle. (2017). Nike introduces the first sports hijab for Muslim athletes. Elle India .

Encyclopedia of Global Brands. (2012). Nike . Detroit: St. James Press.

Fortune. (2018). Fortune 500 companies 2018: Who made the list. Fortune .

Hamilton Rushforth, S. (2017). This Egyptian athlete just put the Nike Pro Hijab in the global spotlight. Harper’s Bazaar Arabia .

Hauser, C. (2018). New Barbie is modeled after American Olympian who wears a hijab. The New York Times .

Instagram. (2018). Ibtihaj Muhammad (@ibtihajmuhammad) Instagram photos and videos.

Ivanova, I. (2017). Nike launches its sports hijab in the US. c bsnews. c om

Karmelek, M. (2015). Special uniforms keep Muslim girls on the court. Newsweek .

Khoja-Moolji, S. (2017). Don’t be quick to celebrate the hijab-wearing Barbie. Aljazeera. c om

Leonard, D. J. (2017). Playing while white: Privilege and power on and off the field . Seattle: University of Washington Press.

LeSavage, H. (2017). Nike’s first hijab for athletes is finally available. Glamour .

Liang, E. (2011). The media’s sexualization of female athletes: A bad call for the modern Game. Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse, 3 (10), 2.

Lipka, M. (2017). Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the World. Pew Research Center .

Lutz, A. (2015). How Nike fixed its sweatshop image. Business Insider .

Martinelli, M. (2017). Nike launches Pro Hijab to make sports more inclusive for women. For the Win, USA Today .

Messner, M. A., & Cooky, C. (2010). Women play sports but not on TV . Women’s Sports Foundation.

Mohanty, C. T. (1984). Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Boundary 2, 12 (13), 333–358.

Article Google Scholar

Muhammad, I., & Tharps, L. (2018). Proud: My fight for an unlikely American dream . New York: Hachette Books.

Murdoch-Smith, L. (2017). Nike Pro launches the first sports hijab with UAE ice skater Zahra Lari. L. British Vogue .

My Salaam. (2018). Manal Rostom is the first Arab featured on the Nike app. Retrieved from https://www.mysalaam.com/en/story/manal-rostom-is-the-first-arab-featured-on-the-nike-app/SALAAM03062018061713

Najmah Abraham, N. (2017). 6 Muslim companies that created sports hijabs way before Nike. My Salaam .

Nike. (2017a). Nike celebrates pioneering spirit of the middle east. Nike News .

Nike. (2017b, December 1). The Nike Pro Hijab goes global. Nike News .

Nike Middle East. (2017). What will they say about you? Maybe they’ll say you showed them what’s possible. #justdoitpic.Twitter.Com/NZbQLC1JuB. Tweet. @nikemiddleeast .

Noor, P. (2017). I’d love a hijab that matches my trainers’: What Muslim athletes think of Nike’s new sportswear. The Guardian .

Pavone, B. (2017). How Muslim figure skater Zahra Lari is changing history. Brit+Co .

Pitjeng, R. (2017). Nike just did it; they launched a hijab collection. Eyewitness News .

Poushter, J. (2014). How people in Muslim countries prefer women to dress in public. Pew Research Center (blog).

Reints, R. (2018). Colin Kaepernick pushes Nike’s market value up $6 billion. Fortune .

Rovell, D. (2005, July 25). Changing clothes: Agassi signs deal with Adidas. ESPN.Com

Safronova, V. (2017). Nike reveals the ‘Pro Hijab’ for Muslim athletes. The New York Times .

Said, E. (1979). Orientalism . New York: Random House.

Stanglin, D. (2017). Nike begins selling a performance hijab for Muslim female athletes. USA Today .

Telesur. (2017). Exploiting empowerment? Nike’s new sport hijab spurs debate. Telesur .

Thomas, L., & Golden, J. (2018). Here’s Nike’s full ad featuring Colin Kaepernick and other athletes. cnbc.com

Time. (2017). The 25 best inventions of 2017. Time.Com

Tuchman, G. (2000). The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media. In Culture and politics (pp. 150–174). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Twitter. (2018). Ibtihaj Muhammad verified account @IbtihajMuhammad. Twitter .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Adrianne Grubic

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrianne Grubic .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Communications Department, Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA

Linda K. Fuller

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Grubic, A. (2021). Chapter 5: Just Wear It: Media Coverage of the Nike Pro Hijab. In: Fuller, L.K. (eds) Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World. New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_6

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_6

Published : 19 November 2020

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-46842-2

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-46843-9

eBook Packages : Social Sciences Social Sciences (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

English (United Kingdom)
Español (América Latina)

The Nike Pro Hijab Goes Global

December 01, 2017

What to know

The Nike Pro Hijab was designed to solve for the performance constraints of a traditional hijab in sport.
The pull-on design is constructed from durable single-layer Nike Pro cool mesh, one of Nike's most breathable fabrics.
The Nike Pro Hijab is intended to help advance the inclusive conversation around hijabs and Muslim women in sports.

New Jersey-native Ibtihaj Muhammad, a Nike athlete and champion fencer, has been carded for false starting many times. “First, I’d get a warning and then a point against me…I can’t tell you how many times that happened,” she says. “And I’d tell the referee, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn't hear you.'”

That’s because Muhammad, who earned a bronze medal in Rio in 2016 for Team USA, typically competed in a children’s hijab that was made of a doubled georgette material. “When the material is wet, it gets really heavy and stiff,” she says, describing what it felt like to sweat with her hijab on. “It would completely obstruct my hearing.”

Beyond that, the garment didn’t interact well with her uniform. Her hijab tied in the back, she pinned the front portion under her chin, then she’d tuck the extra fabric under her sports bra straps so it would stay in place under her mask. “I know that's hard to envision, but that's what I wore for literally my entire athletic career,” she says.

Needless to say, wearing a traditional hijab for competition was less than ideal. But Muhammad and other athletes haven’t had much of a choice. Finding a hijab that worked well for a particular sport was a major challenge. “I remember I only had a few that I used for training and hadn't been able to find that particular style anymore," says Muhammad. On top of that, hijabs weren't fully understood. “When I was in school, I always had to have a letter from a local imam that said that it was safe for me to wear my religious covering during sport," she says. "My coaches had to have that with them at all times."

Muhammad wasn’t the only one who experienced hijab struggles. In fact, Nike designers had been having meetings with top athletes who illuminated the many availability and performance problems associated with wearing a traditional hijab for sport over the past couple of years—conversations that put the designers to work to create a sport hijab prototype.

The designers gave that initial prototype to a variety of athletes, including weightlifter Amna Al Haddad and figure skater Zahra Lari, both from the United Arab Emirates, to put the garment to the test in their respective sports. Everyday athletes from around the Middle East, including runners like Manal Rostom, a Nike Run Club Coach in Dubai, and Zeina Nassar, a German boxer, also assessed the hijabs. Nike gathered both the athletes’ performance feedback and their reactions to the garment’s appearance.

The women came back with a range of input, most of which pointed to the desire for an even lighter, softer and more breathable garment. Nike Pro designers, who are responsible for creating base layers (the layer closest to the skin) for athletes, examined how to make a performance hijab inconspicuous and crafted more prototypes with this goal in mind.

With that, Nike designers evolved the prototypes and received an enthusiastic response, and a final request to modify the fit to account for a range of head sizes and face shapes. The designers sized the head covering to XS/S and M/L (rather than adding an adjustment mechanism, which would add weight). After further dialing in the details and conducting additional rounds of wear testing the Nike Pro Hijab was complete.

Muhammad first experienced the Nike Pro Hijab shortly after that in August 2017. “It really sunk in how much my previous hijab was hindering my performance when I tried the Nike Pro Hijab,” says Muhammad. “Suddenly, I could hear, I wasn’t as hot and it felt like my body was able to cool itself down better and faster.”

That’s a long way from having trouble finding a suitable hijab and having to explain and defend herself to officials. “The Nike Pro Hijab will help advance the conversation around hijabs and Muslim women in sports and further make sports an inclusive space,” says Muhammad.

She is not alone in this thought. For many hijabi athletes, the Nike Pro Hijab is so much more than a performance garment. “It inspires me to reach greater heights and to run farther distances,” says Rostom, who recently completed the New York Marathon in the Nike Pro Hijab. “And I believe it’s going to inspire girls worldwide to follow their passion for sport.”

For Lari, the Pro Hijab is a symbol of empowerment. "It's a reminder to us Muslim women that we can achieve anything in the world," she says. "What Nike has done for Muslim athletes is a dream that we never thought would happen."

The Nike Pro Hijab is available December 1 in black and obsidian on nike.com and at select retailers in Europe, North Africa, North America and across the Middle East. Other colorways, including white and vast gray, will launch in January on nike.com and at select retailers in more than 20 countries.

How Nike’s hijab sports gear is taking on Islamophobia and patriarchy

Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education, Stellenbosch University

Disclosure statement

Nuraan Davids does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Stellenbosch University provides funding as a partner of The Conversation AFRICA.

View all partners

In March, when sports manufacturer Nike launched its “Nike Pro Hijab”, it made obvious business sense. What Nike - perhaps inadvertently ̶ has done, is to legitimise the hijab across two very different narratives.

One is in response to hostile liberal democracies that are adamant in modernising Muslim women by stripping them of their hijab. The other is in response to some interpretations of Islam, which consider the traditional dress and role of Muslim women as irreconcilable with the modern arena of sport.

Nike has countered the position of liberal democracies because, implicit in its action is that if Muslim women are supported in wearing the hijab while participating in sport, then what can be so wrong about it being worn in other contexts? By introducing the “Pro hijab”, Nike is legitimising the wearing of the hijab by Muslim women in sport, and it’s also legitimising the wearing of the hijab in a public space.

The preoccupation of liberal democracies to curtail and regulate the dress code of Muslim women, such as banning the hijab in public spaces, has added to the vulnerability of Muslim women. What liberal democracies demand of them is to de-veil so that they become publicly acceptable.

In these countries, the hijab is designated as a symbol and image of oppression and backwardness. Sports sociologist Jennifer Hargreaves writes in her book Heroines of sport: The politics of difference and identity (2000),

The veil is a symbol of cultural difference. For non-Muslims it conveys the idea that Western women are liberated, and Muslim women, by comparison, are oppressed. The veil represents the ‘Otherness’ of Islam and is condemned in the West as a constricting mode of dress, a form of social control, and a religious sanctioning of women’s invisibility and subordinate sociopolitical status.

Secondly, what Nike has done is to counter the Muslim patriarchal view that justifies the relegation of Muslim women to the private space. They do this on the basis that women’s participation in the public domain necessarily compromises their modesty and values. In recognising Muslim women’s participation in sport, the “Nike Pro Hijab” has symbolically placed the role of the Muslim female body in the public sphere.

But sport transcends the boundaries of geographical and political spaces. It has both the means – and the end – of bringing together different ways of thinking, being and competing. Sport also cuts across culture, religion and language like no other industry.

Muslim women and the public discourse

High end designer names, such as Oscar de la Renta, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace and DKNY already tap into a formerly untraversed market of Muslim money, epitomised by the wealth found in the Gulf region. In this sense Nike’s latest clothing attire has been dismissed as nothing else but opportunistic.

Nike’s “Nike Pro Hijab” has been welcomed by some – mostly Muslim women. But it’s also been criticised harshly for endorsing the oppression of women. Criticism on social media have promoted tweets of dissent with the hashtag #BoycottNike.

But lost in this discontent are three significant facts and factors. Firstly, the participation of Muslim women in sport is not new. Secondly, Muslim women, who participate in sport, and who wish to maintain an Islamic dress code – as in wearing the hijab – have already done so. Thirdly, the impression that Nike is the first to promote a hijab, specifically geared at athletes, is misplaced.

The first person to design and market an “athletic hijab” was Dutch designer, Cindy van den Bremen , who did so in 1999. Today, smaller companies, like Van den Bremen’s “Capsters”, Canadian-based “ResportOn” , as well as a range of Muslim-owned companies, have been selling sports hijāb all over the world. In fact, a specific hijab design by “ResportOn” was one of the reasons that the International Taekwondo Federation allowed Muslim women to compete in recognised tournaments.

Both “Capster” and “ResportOn” submitted prototypes that formally overturned the football umbrella body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (Fifa) hijab ban in 2014. These companies carved out a space for Muslim women when their participation was challenged. Nike’s introduction of the “Pro hijab”, therefore, is not a groundbreaking endeavour – regardless of what their campaign might infer.

But what Nike has achieved in promoting its “Pro hijab”, is that a globally recognised brand has mainstreamed what is generally considered as an oppressive and marginalised garment. Within a context of intensifying levels of Islamophobia increasingly directed at Muslim women, it’s inconceivable that Nike would not have expected the inevitable political and social backlash. Indeed, the ensuing controversy might very well be the best marketing for the latest Nike product.

Women's sport
Islamophobia
Muslim patriarchy

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges

Investigator, Student Academic Misconduct (Multiple Positions Available)

Commissioning Editor Nigeria

Professor in Physiotherapy

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Emirati figure skater Zahra Lari wears Nike's Pro Hijab. AP

The Nike Pro Hijab has become one of the world's most popular clothing items

It sits alongside gucci trainers and fendi handbags as one of this year's most-wanted fashion items.

May 14, 2019

Share on Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
Share on WhatsApp

Product details

halal consumer market , Modest Fashion , Muslim Advertising , Muslim Consumer , Muslim Market News

How muslim culture has shaped nike’s target market.

The Nike Pro Hijab

Nike took its first plunge into modest athletic gear in 2017 when it introduced its thirty-five-dollar Pro Hijab, a stretchy, breathable head covering with a firm seal around the face. By doing so, Nike became the first major sporting apparel brand to offer a performance head covering for Muslim women.

Nike aimed to ensure that women do not encounter any barriers in their sporting lives and to inspire young women to take on an active life.

After the launch of the Pro Hijab, UAE female weightlifter Amna Al Haddad, mentioned that:

Nike truly cares to cater for all kinds of athletes and their needs – as such Nike took notice of the rising number of covered Muslim athletes through stories like mine and many others.

Nike may have been the first major brand to take a plunge into modest athletic gear but smaller businesses and brands – having seen a gap in the market and the huge demand – had already started designing activewear for Muslim women.

In 2016, for instance, Hummel designed jerseys for Afghanistan’s women’s football team incorporating a built-in hijab. Capsters, at the time, was the self-proclaimed “world-leading brand in sport hijabs,” and offered a full line-up of head coverings for land and water sports.

The Pro Hijab in the NBA

Remarkably, Nike has become an inspiration for many brands and organizations offering modest sportswear collections to their consumers. Toronto Raptors is just one of them.

Toronto Raptors, the only Canadian team to compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), produced a branded sports hijab as part of their “inclusivity initiative” program.

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the owner of the Canadian team that won the first NBA league championship in team history in the 2018 – 2019 season, announced that the idea to produce branded hijabs was taken after the playoffs.

The company’s Marketing Director, Jerry Ferguson, said the decision was inspired by a group of Muslim women in the Toronto area who get together to play basketball every Sunday and advocated for Muslim women to participate in sports.

The Toronto Raptors are taking steps to be more fan-inclusive with the unveiling of their officially branded sports hijab with this initiative.

Amreen Kadwa, the founder of Hijabi Ballers, said that Toronto is a multicultural and, therefore, ideal place for such a plan and they welcome the decision.

Before we move further, make sure you download The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Marketing to the Muslim Consumer . Your brand’s guide on breaking into one of the fastest-growing untapped consumer markets in the world.

The Nike Victory Swim Collection

While Muslim women defied a ban to swim in burkinis at French pools, instated in 2016, Nike announced a new swimwear line designed for women who wear hijab on the 10th of December 2019 to be launched in 2020. This followed Nike’s Pro Hijab which was announced in 2017.

Nike’s collection includes the Nike Victory Full-Coverage Swimsuit, a loose, two-layer tunic with an attached hoodie, paired with matching pants. The hoodie acts as a hijab for Muslim women.

Along with this, Nike offers separate swim options:

the Nike Victory Swim Hijab,
the Nike Victory Swim Tunic Top,
and the Nike Victory Swim Leggings.

According to The Detroit Free Press Nike stated:

Existing products were lacking in either coverage or functionality, athletes shared, leaving them feeling weighed down by baggy garments, battling drag instead of striving toward personal bests or worrying about whether their hijabs and coverings would remain in place.

The Birth of Nike’s Victory Swim Collection

Back in 2018, a group of Nike designers went on a global research trip. At swimming pools in Southeast Asia, the designers noticed that kids were frolicking in the water while their mothers hovered at the pool’s edge with heavy garments covering their bodies.

They noticed a similar scenario at the oceanside where adult women would only go into the water up to their thighs. Martha Moore, a Nike creative director in charge of swimwear explains:

I remember the team going, ‘Why aren’t the women in the water?

When the team went to Australia, lifeguards at a beach in Victoria told the Nike team that they worried that Muslim women swimming in heavy garb posed a drowning risk.

Ibtihaj Muhammad, an Olympic medalist in fencing, once stated to German news outlet DW that because of modesty concerns and a lack of obvious swimwear options, “a lot of Muslim girls never learn how to swim,” and that she learned to swim in her family’s back-yard swimming pool. She mentions that it’s the only reason why she knows how to swim.

The Nike designers then visited the Muslim Educational Trust, a school and community center in Beaverton, Oregon.

Mona Almadhoun, the school’s swimming instructor, explained to the Nike team that she learned to swim wearing knee-length shorts and a tank top in women-only pools.

Explaining the situation at her workplace she said that her students have their lessons during female-only hours in the community center’s indoor pool. However, “without a full-body solution, the girls are unable to field a swim team that could compete, for instance, in a civic league, as the girls’ basketball team does”.

Martha Moore, Nike Creative Director, said in a public statement.

The more we listened, the more possibility we saw to serve female athletes in new dimensions. We’re excited to inspire more women to see themselves in sport by thinking creatively and designing inclusively.

Get weekly insights into the Muslim market and trends. Subscribe to the Muslim Ad Network newsletter !

alwi Suleiman

Privacy Overview

Your All-in-One AI-Powered Toolkit for Academic Success.

+13062052269

[email protected].

Available 24*7 on WhatsApp / Email

AI Code Checker
Plagiarism Checker
Study Documents
AI Detector
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy