My child will have surname Mirza Malik: Sania Mirza

PANAJI: She and her cricketer husband Shoaib Malik want a daughter but whenever they decide to start a family, Sania Mirza would want her child's surname to be 'Mirza Malik'.

"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 a surname and not just Malik. So that's where we stand as a family including my husband. He actually wants a daughter," Sania said during a panel discussion on 'Gender Bias' at the 'Goa Fest 2018'.

Sania spoke about her personal experiences of gender bias, where she has heard some of her relatives telling her parents that they should have had a son so that the family name "goes ahead".

"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," the 31-year-old from Hyderabad said.

"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," she said.

Mirza said that pay disparity between men and women players existed in sports and a way out of it was to change the mindsets of people towards women players.