Girls have the RIGHT to PLAY too

They told me I can’t play with them because I am not good enough,” said a nine-year-old girl in Mumbai when asked why she was not playing soccer with a group of boys. Few schools have provisioning for physical education and athletics for young girls. The main reason for this is the way society perceives girls playing sports, the deeply-rooted traditions, and the cultural psyche which is accustomed to the girl child staying at home, doing domestic chores, and cleaning dishes. For those hailing from this mindset, playing cricket in the gully is not for girls. While this may be the status quo in most families in India, the idea of exercising and playing sports is an important one in a young girl’s life. Sports are not only enjoyable, but they teach life skills such as discipline, teamwork, and leadership, attributes that every young girl should come across in their life. 

I am a top-10 national-level squash player in India, and I have had the privilege of being exposed to sports my entire life. A large reason for this was due to the support my parents gave me. I recently sat down with a group of nine-year-old girls from the Akanksha Foundation, (an NGO in India that provides education to underprivileged children) to hear their stories regarding their athletic experiences. While some of them have the privilege of playing sports outside of the mere 40 minutes they get per week during school, none of them are allowed to play with the boys in their area. Boys hurl nasty comments at them, their parents tell them they aren’t supposed to play with boys because they are girls, and that they should dance instead. All of this is intolerable. Each of the girls I talked to told me that they want to get stronger, but they don’t have the knowledge or freedom to achieve that goal. 

On a hot Saturday, the girls (from the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule MPS School under Akanksha Foundation) and I sat down in a circle and discussed the importance of sports for girls. They weren’t happy that their exercise time was so minimal, and I wasn’t either. It is vital that at least 30 minutes of exercise is done every day in order to instil some semblance of balance and discipline in one’s life. They wanted to exercise more, to be stronger than the boys who told them no, and to prove to society that girls are capable. For the past few weeks, these girls have been doing strength and conditioning exercises to get fitter and to prove to everyone around them that they are just as competent as boys. They hope to spread the message to their friends, to ignore the discriminatory comments, to start playing, and to prove to their parents that they are strong enough to play. And just because they are girls, it does not mean that they were born to wash dishes. Playing sports should not be deemed a privilege for girls, it is their right. In fact, every Olympic medal won by India in the 2016 Olympic Games was by a girl, and our girls need to be exposed to sports as much as possible because they could be the next PV Sindhu.

Send your edits to gennextedit@dnaindia.net