Saudi women take to weightlifting for “shape and beauty”

Friday, 27 April 2018 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: In a country where women have yet to drive, a number of women in Saudi Arabia are challenging social norms by taking to heavy sports such as weightlifting.

The conservative Muslim kingdom has allowed female-only-gyms to open earlier this year, amid a wider wave of social and cultural change.

Some of those gyms quickly filled up with customers such as Reham al-Shaaban, who regularly goes to the gym in the eastern city of Dammam.Weightlifting helps women stay in shape and get fit, Shaaban said.

She is aware that assumptions about women engaging in intense workouts still exist but adds that she does not see any problem with it.Some of the gym goers are women who have certification in gym training, which they obtained while living abroad.

Among those is Rana al-Shamasi, who returned from the United States in 2013 to find her society, even her own family, opposed to the idea.

There was a widespread assumption that women would become masculine if they drink protein shakes, she said.

“Even my own family was thinking the same way,” the 28-year-old engineer added.

In February, Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz quoted Princess Reema bint Bandar, the vice president for women’s affairs at the General Authority of Sports, announcing that licenses would be granted to open gyms for women.

The target is to have a gym in every district and neighbourhood, Okaz newspaper reported.

In September, Saudi King Salman ordered that women be allowed to drive cars, ending a conservative tradition seen by rights activists as an emblem of the Islamic kingdom’s repression of women.

The royal decree ordered the formation of a ministerial body to give advice within 30 days and then implement the order by 24 June.