Saudi woman knocking down barriers
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Throwing punches in a gym tucked away from prying eyes, a Saudi female boxing trainer asserts a right long denied to many women — the right to exercise.
Halah Alhamrani, 41, runs a gym for women called FlagBoxing — its motto is Fight Like A Girl — in the western Red Sea city of Jeddah, offering fitness classes such as calisthenics, CrossFit, boxing and kickboxing.
Relying on word-of-mouth publicity in a country where exercising in public is culturally deemed unbecoming for women, Alhamrani is working to empower a generation with little to no exposure to sports.
“On a daily basis, women who have never done sports walk into my class, some with their mothers,” Alhamrani said at her gym, which opened in 2016.
“They walk out more confident. Many find their voice. The mothers approach me and say: ‘Thank you for offering such an empowering feeling’.”
At first blush, the gym screams California, not Saudi Arabia.
Wearing headbands and workout attire, women are seen lifting weights, practicing sparring techniques and pounding their fists into a punching bag.
Some of them crumple up their abaya gowns and toss them into a locker. They sweat it out over thumping music.
Around 150 women, including Saudis but also other Arabs, share a sense of camaraderie.
A note scribbled on a whiteboard reads: “I can’t wait to come back!”
Another banner on the wall reads “BADASS”.
“It sometimes feels like a tea party — without the tea and cookies,” Alhamrani jokes.
Dramatic social reforms which has swept Saudi Arabia in recent years, including a historic decree allowing women to drive from June, have shone the spotlight on figures such as Alhamrani.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 reform plan, the government is seeking to jump-start women’s sports.
Classes for girls
Only four Saudi women featured in the Rio Olympics in 2016 after two were named in the team for London in 2012 — the first time the Gulf nation sent female athletes to the Games.
The kingdom has since then been granting more prestige to the idea, appointing prominent Princess Reema
bint Bandar to oversee women’s sports in the kingdom in 2016.
The country is also moving toward compulsory physical education classes for girls after a ban was scrapped in 2014.
Alhamrani is involved in shaping the new public school sports curriculum.
As the daughter of an American mother and Saudi father, she has parents who were open-minded and encouraged sports from an early age.
That start has put her on track to become one of the kingdom’s early pioneers of women’s boxing training.
For now, her low-profile gym operates out of a residential complex, behind opaque glass walls with no outdoor signage.
The location is available on her website, but even so, some first-timers have to call to find their way.
Some clients view the gym sessions as therapy, Alhamrani said. It offers them such a release that she said some of them end up crying.
“I used to be a timid mother who could not look people in the eye,” said a 36-year-old housewife and mother-of-four, and a regular at the gym.
“The gym gave me a voice that I had lost. It gave me strength that I never knew existed.”