The very tennis player who had once shut a journalist down for asking her about her plans to ‘settle down’, has now set another example of thwarting gender biases. At the ongoing Goa Fest 2018, where she was part of a panel discussion on ‘Gender Biases’, Sania Mirza revealed that her son or daughter would take both the parents’ surnames. She also revealed that her Pakistani cricketer husband, Shoaib Malik, wants a daughter.

“Today I will tell you a secret. My husband and I have spoken about it and we have decided that whenever we have a child, the child will have Mirza Malik as his or her surname and not just Malik. So that’s where we stand as a family. Shoaib actually wants a daughter,” said Sania.




Much like any other Indian girl, the 31-year-old also revealed that she has faced gender bias from her own relatives all her life. She shared that her relatives would often ask her parents to have a son who would take the family name forward.

The former world no. 1 rued, “We are two sisters and have never wished that we had a brother. I have had fights with my uncles and aunts who talk about it or come up and tell my parents that they should have had a son. For us, daughters are daughters and there was nothing like wanting a son to carry the family name forward. I have not changed my surname (post marriage) and my name is still Sania Mirza and it will remain that way. The family name is going to go forward in any case.”