In Iraq, All-Woman Basketball Team Challenges Gender Norms

As part of the Rise Above documentary series, Laylan, the 20-year-old star of her all-woman basketball team, explains how she and her teammates can challenge entrenched patriarchal attitudes about gender by playing basketball. Only a year ago, Laylan and her teammates hadn’t played at all — some of them didn’t even know that they had to dribble! (Cue imperialistic scoff.) Now, they’re pretty good and steadily improving, a fact that offers hope to other athletically inclined women in Iraq who really want to get on the court and aren’t just doing it because they need an extracurricular activity and their P.E. teacher mistakes their awkward pre-adolescent height for a physical asset and not, as it truly is, a wellspring of humiliating clumsiness.

via Buzzfeed