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NAJAF: Bushra Al-Hajjar, an Iraqi boxer, enters the ring with her gloves raised to eye level and strikes out at her sparring partner.
Her greater challenge, however, is to break down social taboos.
The sight of a women’s boxing hall in Iraq’s Shiite city of Najaf is unusual, but the 35-year-old boxing instructor, like others here, is trying to fight deeply embedded taboos.
“At home, I have a full training room, with mats and a punching bag,” said the mother of two, who also practices karate.
In December, Hajjar won the gold medal in the 70-kilogram weight class at a boxing tournament in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital.
“My family and friends are very supportive, they’re very happy with the level I’ve reached,” she said, a blue headscarf pulled tight around her hair.
She goes to a private university in Najaf, 100 kilometers south of Baghdad, twice a week to train and teach sports.
Hajjar acknowledges that her adventure has raised eyebrows in Iraq’s largely conservative society, particularly in Najaf.
“We’ve come across many difficulties,” she said. “We’re a conservative society that has difficulty accepting these kinds of things.”
“Today, there are many halls,” she said, recalling the protests when women’s training facilities first opened.
“We live in a macho society that opposes success for women,” boxing student Ola Mustafa, 16, said as she took a break from her punching bag.
She did, however, say that she has the assistance of not only her trainer but also her parents and brother, indicating that social change is underway.
“People are gradually beginning to accept it,” she said. “If more girls try it out, society will automatically come to accept it.”
Iraqi women participating in boxing is a “recent phenomenon,” according to Iraqi boxing federation president Ali Taklif, but it is gaining traction. “There is a lot of demand from females wanting to join,” he said, noting that Iraq now has around 20 women’s boxing clubs.
In a December tournament, more than 100 women boxers competed in all categories, he added.
But “like other sports (in Iraq), the discipline suffers from a lack of infrastructure, training facilities, and equipment.”
Iraq had a great heritage of women in sports in the past, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.
Women’s teams competed in regional tournaments in a variety of sports, including basketball, volleyball, and cycling.
However, sanctions, decades of dispute, and a hardening of conservative social values brought this era to an end, with only the independent Kurdistan region in northern Iraq largely untouched.
In recent years, there has been a slight reversal, with women taking up a variety of sports, including kickboxing. Boxing runs in the family for Hajjer Ghazi, who won a silver medal at the age of 13 in December.
Her father, a retired professional boxer, motivated his children to pursue a career in the sport.
Her older brother Ali, as well as her sisters, are all boxers.
“Our father supports us more than the state does,” said Ali in their hometown of Amara in southwestern Iraq.
“Women have the right to play sports, it’s only normal,” Hassanein Ghazi, a 55-year-old truck driver who won several medals in his glory days, insists.
He recognizes certain “sensitivities” remain, linked to traditional tribal values.
As an example, he pointed out that “when their coach wants them to run, he takes them to the outskirts of town,” away from too many onlookers.
