‘the beautiful game’: south african women challenge gender discrimination through soccer

On our radar for their courage and general badassness: the City Lads Ladies are a female soccer team in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Their story touches on passion, resilience, sexism, homophobia, rape. “A lot of women soccer players are being killed because they say ‘We’ll show you that you are a woman.’” says team member Titie. “Two guys came in front of me. They robbed me first. They didn’t know I was a girl. This other guy said “no man that’s a girl” and that’s when they came back….sometimes I kept on asking myself why didn’t I tell anyone…” says her colleague Amy.
There is a documentary currently being made to tell this story. As the production team states, these women “use their love for the sport as a tool to challenge deep-seated cultural stereotyping and biases”. They are currently running a Kickstater campaign to complete post-production and editing. Check out the promo video and the images below, and click HERE if you’d like to support the project. – L C-D