On a balmy Sunday morning in Bangalore, in southern India, a score of women have gathered to play five-a-side soccer.
The Sisters in Sweat community, which started as a one-off weekend event for fun in November 2017 with 17 women, now meets once a week and boasts 130 members.
The average age of the women involved is 35. Only half of them played sport at school or in college, while a quarter have never played sports in their lives. Of the group, less than 20 per cent had played soccer before joining.
Tanvie Hans, a 28-year-old former midfielder for Tottenham Hotspur and Fulham, and personal trainer Swetha Subbiah, 34, are the volunteer coaches.
Subbiah handles the first 30 minutes of practice, focusing on getting the women warmed up. Hans handles the last hour, where players do soccer drills, focusing on agility, before finishing off with a game.
A registration link goes up on the team’s WhatsApp group 24 hours before the training. Selection is on a first-come, first-served basis – and within minutes the 20 slots are full.
Breast cancer surgeon Dr Muddama Monnappa, 42, makes sure she’s always on the list when she wants to play. Today, she has her four-year-old daughter, Miara, in tow.
“I decided to come along despite it being challenging with a small child (Miara was only two years old when the doctor first joined) because [it’s important that] she’s exposed to sport. It is extremely important for an individual’s all-round development,” says the single mum.
Though Monnappa has always been an athlete, joining the Sisters marked the first time she had ever played soccer with a group of women.
Ashika Abraham Chittiappa, 35, had her second child three months ago. Her first was born through caesarean section and she insisted her second be a natural birth – to allow her to rejoin soccer as soon as possible. She was back on the field two months post-delivery.
“Football has the power to make one feel like they’re unstoppable,” Chittiappa says, adding that she wants her daughters to know that.
“Whether you’re a teenager going through a rough time or a mother going through post-partum depression, I feel like sport does what no medication, no diet can,” she says.
While soccer may be the most popular sport in the world, in India it is cricket that is king. That’s despite hockey being the national sport.
While India is a strong sporting nation, there is generally not much support for women in sport, socially nor from the government. A lack of funding and infrastructure makes things worse.
Despite this, Indian female athletes have been able to hold their own on the world’s stage: Sania Mirza was a tennis world No. 1 in the doubles discipline and has won six Grand Slam titles in her career; Pusarla Venkata Sindhu and Saina Nehwal have both won Olympic medals in badminton; track and field athletes Hima Das, Dutee Chand and Nirmala Sheoran have all made headlines in recent years; MC Mary Kom is the only woman to have won the World Amateur Boxing Championships six times; and Bula Choudhury is a former Indian swimming champion.
A 2007 research paper from the United Nations said “[women and girls’] participation in sport and physical activity can prevent a myriad of non-communicable diseases, which account for 60 per cent of global deaths, 66 per cent of which occur in developing countries”.
It also said: “For older women, it [physical activity] can contribute to the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, which account for one third of deaths among women around the world and half of all deaths among women over [the age of] 50 in developing countries.”
I decided that I wanted to challenge myself in new ways. I just took a chance and it was really fun. – Netra Srikanth
Physical activity also helps prevent chronic and degenerative diseases associated with ageing, such as type-2 diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and osteoporosis, and helps with the management of Alzheimer’s disease, depression, anxiety and loneliness.
According to the UN paper, “five-a-side [soccer] is more beneficial than a full-scale game, as it ensures that all players get a vigorous workout”.
Subbiah says that, for older women, fitness usually means going to the gym or practising yoga or Pilates, while sports – like soccer – are completely forgotten.
Hans says: “Men always have a [sports] community and they keep playing after school or college. But women don’t, even though we’re very social people.” The soccer star is in the process of giving up her British passport to get an Indian one, to allow her to play for her country of birth.
Most of the women in the group say that, even if they had played sports before, they stopped once they started working, or got married and had babies.
Staying fit is their main reason for joining the Sisters, though meeting other soccer enthusiasts and socialising is also an incentive.
“You become a mum and suddenly your whole role changes. But I’m still that woman who needs things for myself,” Chittiappa says.
Soccer is a contact sport, so some people don’t initially want to play it, “but I think once they come into an all-women kind of space, that fear vanishes and you just feel like you’re playing with your friends. I think we’ve created a safe space for them,” Hans says.
Despite their good work, women playing soccer in India is still a rare sight. Netra Srikanth, a 36-year-old mother of four, says her family still laughs at her every time she says she’s going to play soccer. This is the first time Srikanth has ever played sport in her life.
Not only does she play, but, along with 32-year-old Leanna Cockburn (whom she met through the group), she also teaches underprivileged girls soccer skills.
“I decided that I wanted to challenge myself in new ways,” she says. “I just took a chance and it was really fun.”
