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 For the last six months, these athletes-in-the-making have been
training at the Pak Shaheen Boxing Club in Lyari, a packed Karachi
ward known more for its internecine gang warfare than for breaking
glass ceilings.
During the week, a dozen girls, aged eight to 17, go to the club
after school to practice their jabs, hooks and upper cuts for hours
in the hope of one day bringing a medal home to Pakistan.
"I have been training since I was a child," said Urooj Qambrani, 15.
"Inshallah, I will become an international boxer. ... I will make
Pakistan's name famous."
Pakistani women have been training as boxers in small numbers and
competed in the South Asian Games last year, said Younis Qambrani,
the coach who founded the club in 1992.
The growth of the sport for both men and women in Pakistan has been
dogged by a lack of equipment and adequate facilities, but the
situation is slowly improving, he said.
In Pakistan, a conservative Muslim society, women and girls face
additional obstacles - both from Taliban threats for going to school
and also violence from family members, including so-called "honor
killings" in which male relatives kill girls deemed to have brought
shame to the family name.
In October, the Sindh Boxing Association organised a camp for female
boxers in Karachi, the first time that a government-supported event
for women in the sport was held in the country, according to media
reports.
Some of the girls in Qambrani's family, who had taken up practising
at home, participated in the camp, and came to Qambrani afterwards
to ask why they couldn't train at his club as well.
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"A number of girls were keen on training, but due to social
pressures, I had been avoiding the issue," Qambrani said.
"Last year a girl came to me, asking why girls couldn't train. I was
moved when she said, 'No one teaches us how to defend ourselves,'"
he said.
Since then, some of the girls have begun to participate in
tournaments, at home in the ring in white track suits, head scarves
and boxing gloves.
For Anum Qambrani, the coach's 17-year-old daughter, getting the
chance to train formally in the club was nothing short of fulfilling
her birthright.
"My two uncles are international boxers, and my father is a coach,"
she said. "Boxing is in our blood."
(Reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi; Writing by Krista Mahr;
Editing by Kay Johnson and Nick Macfie)
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