Female athletes in India say they experience sexism, favoritism, and sexual harassment. DW Asia looks at what's behind this and what needs to be changed.
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00:00 India's women's sport is under the spotlight again.
00:03 India's women's hockey team coach, J. N. A. K. Schopman, a Dutch woman, has accused
00:08 the officials of Hockey India of discriminatory behaviour.
00:13 The former Olympic gold medallist said the men's team got a preferential treatment and
00:18 that this country is extremely difficult for women.
00:22 She also said, and I quote, "I come from a culture where women are respected and valued.
00:27 I don't feel that here.
00:28 I wanted to understand more about that and so I asked an expert."
00:33 The absence of women coaches in India is very, very visible and obviously, Anika Schopman
00:37 is one of the rare head coaches in any sport.
00:41 So there is this patriarchy that works in Indian sport.
00:43 But as we have seen with the wrestlers' protest, no matter how influential and important an
00:48 athlete you are, you can find yourself in a position where you are, you know, basically,
00:54 you are made to feel small, you are made to feel inconsequential because of the fact that
00:58 you happen to be a woman.
00:59 The wrestlers' protest this journalist is referring to happened last year when some
01:04 of India's most prominent wrestlers led a sit-in protest near the country's parliament
01:10 demanding action against a powerful politician who also helmed the Wrestling Federation of
01:15 India for more than a decade.
01:17 He has been accused of sexually harassing and intimidating female athletes.
01:22 These women wrestlers are the most successful women wrestlers internationally that the country
01:27 has ever had.
01:29 They were treated in exactly the way all women's complaints are treated with regard to abuse
01:33 in our society.
01:34 If it's happening to our top athletes, can you imagine what's happening right at the
01:39 ground level?
01:40 I wanted to find out are these just two unrelated cases or is abuse of positions ingrained in
01:46 sporting structures?
01:48 Indian sporting structures are very lopsidedly sort of handled.
01:53 The people that run our sports federations usually tend to be politicians, bureaucrats
01:58 or businessmen with a little bit of interest in sport.
02:01 And the moment you get that in, nobody wants their business to be regulated in any way.
02:06 A lot of the money and funding comes from government.
02:08 There are no grievance redressal mechanisms that actually are independent and can work
02:12 properly.
02:13 Wrestling is not the only sport in India affected by sexual harassment.
02:17 The coach of the country's national cycling team was sacked in 2022 following similar
02:22 charges.
02:23 A 2021 research report indicated that there could be nearly 200 perpetrators and 10,000
02:30 victims across 53 major sports in India.
02:33 Predatory behaviors, unequal pay, lack of funding, poor access to resources and corruption
02:40 all play a role in the abysmal state of Indian women's sport.
02:44 So what needs to change?
02:45 So you're hoping that this will come through, that her experience and someone like her will
02:51 come through and there will be more women outside of just the playing field.
02:54 They're there calling the shots, doing the coaching, being in senior positions.
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