Tabitha Chawinga, Malawi Football star, has come out of an incident during the Presidential Cup match when she was asked to undress in public to prove she is a woman.

Chawinga, currently playing for Wuhan Jianghan University FC in the Chinese Women’s Super League, called on Malawi’s football authorities to introduce safeguards to protect women from abuse at all levels of the game.

“I don’t want other people to face the same. It makes me think if they are insulting someone they have just met at the football ground, what would they do if I was born in their family. Could they have killed me?” she said in a telephone interview from China. 

The 25-year-old has been voted for the player of the tournament in the Chinese Super League for two years in a row.

She was on the list of top-10 footballers by The Guardian, which was published last year.

She said she was 13 when she was asked to undress publicly in front of opposition to prove she is a girl. 

Her opponents did not believe she was female because of her physical appearance and how well she played.

“I had never been so devastated and I cried at the embarrassment that I had been exposed to. I wanted to walk out right away but somehow my teammates consoled me and I decided to finish the game,” she said.

The same thing happened a year later when she played for the Lilongwe women’s football team DD Sunshine – a move, she said, that was her first step into a professional football career.

During a women’s Presidential Cup match, she was told to undress on the pitch.

"We were participating in a Presidential Cup match and for our first game, we traveled to Blantyre to play Blantyre Zero. It was a very difficult game and while it was being played, I was undressed right in the ground,” said Chawinga, who began playing football with her male cousins at a young age. “I lost it right at that moment and we ended up losing the game as well.”

DD Sunshine’s owner, David Dube, said that the club lodged a complaint at the time with the Football Association of Malawi but did not get a response.

“When I was being stripped, I was young and I didn’t know my rights. But if we talk about rights, they should be implemented. I am encouraging those women who have a passion for football that everything is possible. And being born different is not the end of the world,” said Chawinga.

 

“I would like to ask the government and the sports officials to make sure that the rights of every player are protected. This is the way I was born and I know I am God’s creation. I can’t change how I look,” she said.

“I am asking the women’s football officials to promote the wellbeing of players by protecting their human rights.”