Bend it like Poonam: Young girls challenge patriarchy on football field

Poonam is a teenager from Varanasi, a city in the Uttar Pradesh State of North India. She used to believe firmly that girls should stay at home and eventually get married. "Today, I feel that girls should have full freedom,” she says. What changed for Poonam? In a word: sports. She and a bunch of girls in her community learned to play ball.

Rekha Chauhan is the project director of Mahila Swarojgar Samiti (MSS), an organization that helps teenage girls in Varanasi shape their identity and be more confident about their sexuality through football. Rekha says:

When these girls play, they play