Kusum Kumari had no great agenda in mind when she started playing football aged nine near her home in rural Jharkhand in India. She just wanted to have fun. Now 15, she is pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved by girls in a state notorious for human trafficking and child marriage.

“People believe girls should fetch water from the well, wash dishes, wash clothes in the pond, work in the field, cut grass for the cows, collect firewood and cook food,” she said at the Girl Power in Play symposium, on the sidelines of the Women’s World Cup, in Ottawa this month. “My team-mates and I know that when we stay together, then our dreams will happen in real life. We see in our family and village that when girls finish the 10th grade, they get married. We don’t want to get married until we can stand on our own feet.”

With the support of Yuwa, an NGO that uses girls’ team sports as a platform for social development, Kumari and her team-mates have challenged the widely held idea that girls belong at home. They have gained recognition in their community and on football pitches abroad.

In 2013, the team finished third in an under-14 tournament in Spain, and last year they travelled to the US to take part in the Schwan’s USA Cup.

The sporting endeavours of Kusum Kumari and her team-mates have altered the way they are perceived. Above, Kusum in Hutup village. Photograph: Yuwa

The role of sport in promoting development has gained prominence since the UN established a task force on sport for development and peace in 2001, adopting a resolution two years later on sport as a means to help achieve the millennium development goals.

“The feeling of power [that comes from sport], the feeling of accomplishment, the physical strength – that can help change their lives,” says Katja Iversen, chief executive officer of Women Deliver, which co-hosted the Girl Power in Play meeting with Unicef, Right to Play, One Goal and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. “That’s why we really need to take sport seriously as a game-changer for girls and women, to empower them and change their status in society.”

Yet, despite successful projects like Yuwa, whose programmes have kept dozens of poor girls in school by promoting education in workshops and offering additional classes, experts say sport is by no means a foolproof route to empowerment.



“Many of these organisations are unable to tackle the structural inequalities that are marginalising these groups in the first place,” says Lyndsay Hayhurst, an expert on girls’ empowerment and sport at the University of British Columbia. “It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of funding, and it takes a great deal of social change [to improve women’s rights].”

Jharkhand has one of the highest rates of child marriage of any Indian state. Tens of thousands of children are trafficked from the region annually and forced into marriage, prostitution or gruelling labour, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

“The places where we work are very isolated. Families invest in boys, not girls. They pretty much train girls to be wives and mothers,” says Rose Thomson, Yuwa’s education director.

Yuwa was founded in 2009, and about 150 girls now take part in its football practices and workshops. At these gatherings, girls discuss issues ranging from human rights to their bodies. They can also attend classes to supplement their schooling. They meet almost daily, sometimes starting as early as 5.30am.

Although many locals criticise the girls for wearing jerseys and playing football, Yuwa has created “a supportive community where it’s cool to go to school and be ambitious”, says Thomson. When girls don’t show up to practice, their team-mates often check on them and speak to their parents to ensure they return.

A Yuwa gathering in Hutup village last December. Photograph: Ilana Millner

Sanjana Gaind, programme manager at Crea, an Indian human rights group, says that the simple act of getting girls on to the pitch challenges gender norms. Working with organisations in the states of Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Crea uses football to gather girls for discussions about feminism, health and other issues.

Both Yuwa and Crea say their programmes boost confidence and feed aspiration. Yuwa girls say they want to be doctors, lawyers and judges. Their sporting and academic success wins support at home and gives them the courage to tell their parents they want to delay marriage.

“Before I joined Yuwa, I did go to school – but at that time I was not going every day,” says Kumari, whose sister dropped out of school to get married when she was about 15. Kumari says she began focusing on her studies after meeting women through Yuwa who had pursued careers as diverse as journalism and hair-styling.

It is, however, hard for Yuwa and Crea to tackle some of the social problems. In Gaind’s experience, the pressure to get married is so strong in some rural areas of northern India that for every girl who convinces her parents to let her delay marriage and stay in school, there are many who cannot.

Domestic violence is also a problem in Jharkhand. One 18-year-old was forced to stop coaching a team of younger girls for days after her brother, furious at her training activities, beat her up.

Yuwa intervened and the beatings stopped, says Thomson. Nonetheless, the story shows that even with knowledge of their rights and support from the group, girls can face frightening opposition at home in a country where violence against women is pervasive and much of it is at the hands of family members.

Thomson remains hopeful, however. “If they continue getting an education and pursuing a different future, they will put themselves in a position where they can stand up to abuse,” she says.

Persuading parents and community members to support girls’ sports is key to success.

Yuwa’s child development officer, Neha Baxla, who is from Jharkhand, deals directly with the girls’ families. “The biggest challenge… is making parents understand why girls need to go for higher education, or why it is important for them to get jobs,” she says.

As girls get older, many parents try to pull them out of Yuwa or school. Baxla visits their homes to convince them otherwise. She says she succeeds in about two-third of cases, usually after many meetings.

“It’s mainly the social pressure [to keep girls at home], because this is a rural village,” Baxla says, adding that the girls’ mostly illiterate parents struggle to understand the benefits of Yuwa. “They didn’t get a chance to go to school, or they haven’t seen this kind of thing happening in their life.”

Kumari’s parents are illiterate, but she plans to attend university so that she can become a social worker and help other girls. “I’ll teach them that education is very important, and I will tell them: ‘If you want to play any sport, that will help you to understand things.’”