An elite female soccer player says she was forced to strip during matches to prove she is a woman

• One of the best female soccer players on earth said she was forced to strip during matches.
• Malawi's Tabitha Chawinga said opponents did not believe she was female during matches in her home country.
• "I had never been so devastated and I cried at the embarrassment," she told The Guardian.

One of women's soccer's most talented players, Tabitha Chawinga, says she was forced to strip on multiple occasions during matches in her home country to prove she was a woman.

Chawinga, who is from Malawi, but plays for Wuhan Jianghan University FC in the Chinese Women's Super League, says she was first made to undress when she was just aged 13 while playing for a girls' school team.

Her opponents did not believe she was female because of her physical appearance and her ability.

"I had never been so devastated and I cried at the embarrassment that I had been exposed to," she told The Guardian.

"I wanted to walk out right away but somehow my teammates consoled me and I decided to finish the game."

After quitting the sport for a year because of the incident, Chawinga says it then happened again shortly after she had joined women's football team DD Sunshine in Malawi's capital city, Lilongwe.

"We were participating in a Presidential Cup match and for our first game we travelled to Blantyre to play Blantyre Zero," she said.

"It was a very difficult game and while it was being played, I was undressed right in the ground. I lost it right at that moment and we ended up losing the game as well."

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

Chawinga herself said that she did not take up the issue with the authorities because she felt she was too young, but now wants to tell her story to encourage change.

"When I was being stripped, I was young and I didn't know my rights," she said. "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.

"I am asking the women's football officials to promote the wellbeing of players by protecting their human rights."

Alfred Gunda, general secretary of the Football Association of Malawi who was not at the organization when the complaint was made by DD Sunshine, said, per The Guardian: "What happened is not right and we cannot condone it."

Chawinga, 25, was named the Chinese Women's Super League Player of the Year for both the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons. In 2020 she was named as one of the top 100 female players on the planet by the Guardian newspaper.