Women footballers: Born with talent, held back by prejudice

Football is one of the most popular female sports, with about 30 million girls and women playing it worldwide. But in several countries, girls are not allowed to play. In others, they are discriminated against. Even in football-crazy Brazil, women come up against a lot of challenges as Irene Caselli, Claudia Jardim and Mariangela Maturi found when they spoke to well-established and aspiring female footballers in Africa, Europe and Latin America.

"It was just me, a girl in the middle of a lot of boys," says Marta Vieira da Silva, the Brazilian football legend who is better known just as Marta.

Not only does she hold the record for the most goals scored at the Women's World Cup, she is also the only woman to have been named the world's best female footballer five times.

Nevertheless, Marta says she did not have an easy time of it starting out in football.

"My family didn't approve. They didn't accept it because people still thought that girls weren't allowed to play football," she recalls.


Source : bbc