Appropriate Sport Clothing
Many communities impose constraints on what is considered appropriate attire for girls. In some conservative and religious societies, expectations include modest dress, often covering legs, arms and/or hair.
According to programme partners, these requirements can make participation in many sports challenging for girls from both a practical and a psychological standpoint.
If a girl feels like they are shaming their family for wearing a swimsuit in public, they are not likely to want to swim. It can be very dangerous for a girl to shame their family by behaving in a manner that is perceived as inappropriate: they risk being punished (physically or psychologically), threatened, or having their freedom of movement restricted.
Our recommendations
In the infographic below you can see some recommendations for dealing with this barrier. You can adopt these to suit your context. You can also download the infographic to use offline.
Case Study
You can see a case study of how other organisations have addressed this barrier by clicking the accordion menu below.
Muslim girls in certain communities around the world are fighting for their right to play sports. Some local, national, and international sporting federations and bodies prohibit the wearing of a hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslims girls and women, while playing. Muslim athletes are put in a position of having to choose between their love for a game and their religion.
Founé Diawara was 15 years old when she was first told she could not wear her hijab in a football match. It was an important game: she had recently got into the team of a club in Meaux, the town north-east of Paris where she grew up, and they were playing a local rival. Diawara had been wearing her hijab during training, but as she was about to walk on to the pitch, the referee said she must remove it if she wanted to play. Diawara refused to take her hijab off and channelled her anger from that day into action. She became co-president of Les Hijabeuses, a collective of young hijab-wearing female footballers campaigning against the FFF’s ban as part of a wider battle to promote a more inclusive society in France, which has seen a rise in far-right groups and Islamophobia.
Formed in May 2020 by community organisers from the Citizen’s Alliance, which campaigns against social injustices in France, the Paris-based Les Hijabeuses now has more than 100 members. They play football together, connect with other teams across France and put on training sessions to encourage other young hijab-wearing women to get into football.
