‘You can be feminine and you can still smash people on the pitch’: up and coming Hong Kong rugby star talks about overcoming stigmas to get more girls into game
- The Hong Kong Rugby Union Women’s Performance Programme member also coaches at Sandy Bay and plays for Valley in the Premiership
- Dhar said girls need to feel confident they can play sports and retain their femininity at the same time
Tanya Dhar has a message for young girls who aren’t sure if they can play rugby or not.
“You can be feminine and you can still smash people on the pitch,” said the 19-year-old Hong Kong 15s national programme team member who plays her club rugby for Valley in the Premiership division.
“I’m still quite girlie, I like doing all the girlie stuff, I like to get my nails done and I have long hair so I get it braided. That’s just me personally, I like the feminine side of stuff, and there are a lot of girls who don’t, and that’s okay too.”
Dhar, who coaches under 14 girls through Sandy Bay’s youth programme, is also a student at City University in Kowloon Tong studying economics. She said growing up in the South Horizons area – her parents immigrated from India six months before her birth with her older brother – there was definitely a stigma when it came to girls playing rough and tumble sports like rugby.
Dhar first picked up a ball at the age of four. She noticed a lot of girls like her started out young, but that they dropped out at a much higher rate than the boys for a number of reasons, one of them being culturally related.