‘Want equal respect’: Pakistan’s females galloping to glory in tent pegging | Women News

Rawalpindi, Pakistan – On a chilly January morning, Anum Shakoor gallops throughout a discipline, wrapped in a black scarf that billows behind her as she prices ahead, a 1.8-metre (6ft) lance gripped tightly in her hand.

The 30-year-old has already claimed her first peg. The second lies shut forward.

Her horse tears throughout the dry earth, kicking up a cloud of mud that hangs within the air as she prices ahead. Just a few metres out, Shakoor lowers the lance, steadying her goal and bracing for impression.

She misses by 2.5cm (1 inch).

A collective gasp ripples by the crowded bleachers. Many onlookers shake their heads. Some look away.

Shakoor exhales and slows her horse to a stroll. Round her are the desolate, windswept fields on the outskirts of Rawalpindi in northern Punjab province.

And there are males, most of them carrying turbans. Males with “dhol” (drums) hanging from their necks. And males whose fathers had ridden earlier than them and their fathers earlier than their fathers. The boys who take delight within the historic sport, a few of whom maybe usually are not prepared to just accept that ladies are actually collaborating in an overwhelmingly male “neza baazi”, or tent pegging, a high-stakes sport by which horse riders gallop throughout a discipline to pierce a buried picket goal.

The sphere is lined with 1000’s of male spectators, gathered to observe the groups of riders charging one after the opposite at a small picket peg buried within the floor, attempting to pierce it cleanly and carry it ahead on their lance.

The occasion is called a “mela” in Punjabi, a carnival-like competitors sometimes held on the outskirts of the garrison metropolis.

The beat of drums intertwined with the sharp bursts of the shehnai (oboe), historically performed in weddings, pierces the chilly winter air. Salespeople name out to the crowds from bustling stalls promoting cardamom tea and styles of fried fritters.

Earlier than the competitors begins, riders mount their adorned horses, a few of that are wearing embroidered velvet robes. Others have braided manes or brass bells ringing softly at their necks.

One of many 74 groups competing on this 12 months’s mela is Shakoor’s Bint-e-Zahra Membership, Pakistan’s first female-only tent-pegging membership. It has three different riders: Eshal Ibrahim and Noor un Nisa Malik, each 16, and Sehrish Awan, a 32-year-old mom of two competing for the primary time in a mela.

Shakoor says the membership was fashioned in 2025 after she reached a “irritating realisation” that feminine riders practised and performed solely in combined golf equipment. “We wished to present girls riders a stage for coaching to allow them to type a group,” she says.

The ladies are an uncommon sight at a contest that has nearly completely male driving groups, primarily male followers and even male musicians.

So when Bint-e-Zahra’s members put together to make their run, the viewers is in for a uncommon sight. Photographers, vloggers and locals rush to movie them, surrounding them from all sides.

Ibrahim is accompanied by her mom, who trails intently behind her, retaining a cautious eye on her teenage daughter.

“I can’t even take footage of her within the crowd,” says Fatima Adeel, who accompanies Ibrahim to each mela. “I’m in command of her. I can’t depart a teenage lady alone in a sea of males.”

Shakoor agrees.

“Any lady who needs to come back on this sport ought to be inspired so she will acquire the respect she deserves within the sport,” she says. “Our society can’t bear a lady’s lead in any discipline.”

‘No idea of a participant’

A number of kilometres away, Ayesha Khan, 22, gallops on Sawa, the horse she has ridden since she was eight, for a observe run together with her membership.

She was 17 when her father inspired her to check out for the ladies’s nationwide crew. A 12 months later, she was the one lady chosen for Pakistan’s under-21 combined gender crew and was despatched to South Africa for a event to compete towards a crew that had 4 ladies and one boy.

“I used to be hit with the realisation of how tent pegging is conditioned to seem masculine in Pakistan. However my father and brothers taught me driving after I was 5. I was the one baby driving a horse between adults,” Khan says, describing herself as “addicted” to driving.

Khan joined the ladies’s crew in 2022 and shortly labored her means as much as changing into its captain. That very same 12 months, she took the ladies’s crew to Jordan, the place it competed towards 13 nations.

“We got here third,” Khan remembers proudly. “But that was the one journey that the Pakistani girls’s crew competed in internationally. Earlier than that journey, by no means. After that, by no means once more.”

In 2024, the Worldwide Tent Pegging Federation organised an open worldwide competitors in Jordan. Pakistan despatched a men-only crew though the occasion was open to girls. It was merely assumed that solely males would wish to go.

“In Pakistan, we don’t have the idea of a participant,” Khan tells Al Jazeera. “We’ve got the idea of female and male. Except there’s a women-only occasion, our federation completely sends male groups.”

However Khan endured. At 20, she grew to become the primary Pakistani lady to compete towards and beat 70 male riders at a mela. At this time, she captains Pakistan’s solely all-women tent pegging crew.

How girls entered the game

The occasion close to Rawalpindi that Shakoor attended was organised by Samiullah Barsa, a 27-year-old United States nationwide of Pakistani origin, as a part of his marriage ceremony celebrations.

“No marriage ceremony is full with out neza baazi,” says Barsa, who’s wearing a blazing purple waistcoat and cowboy boots.

His household emigrated within the Eighties from the Punjab metropolis of Gujrat to the US state of Ohio, the place they personal a secure and host annual melas. Final 12 months, their mela drew greater than 2,000 guests, Barsa says.

Barsa remembers the primary time he noticed girls compete in tent pegging. In 2015, he attended a mela at Kot Fateh Khan in Attock district, an hour from the capital, Islamabad, and the hometown of Malik Ata, fondly remembered as “Baba-e neza baazi” (the daddy of tent pegging).

Ata was a politician who got here from an influential feudal household in Kot Fateh Khan. He was additionally a legendary equestrian who organised grand melas and invited a whole bunch of groups from throughout Pakistan to compete in numerous equestrian sports activities, together with neza baazi.

On the first such grand mela, Ata invited the Australian girls’s tent-pegging crew, setting the stage for Pakistani girls to embrace the game.

In 2021, the Equestrian Federation of Pakistan, established by Ata, sponsored six ladies to coach underneath a South African coach. Khan was amongst those that made the journey to South Africa. She credit Ata for laying the roots of feminine participation in Pakistani tent pegging.

Barsa says Ata’s contribution to the game can’t be denied and it was time for girls to have their very own groups.

“In every single place alongside the world, men and women have separate competitors. For example, in soccer or in cricket, have you ever ever seen girls competing towards males?” he asks. “When feminine groups lose towards male groups, they lose hope and don’t come ahead.”

However has it been simple for girls to pursue the game?

Not likely, each Khan and Shakoor say.

‘I by no means gave up’

Shakoor says there may be large social strain on women and girls to evolve to roles outlined by the patriarchy.

“My mom has informed me a number of occasions that I’ve to get married. However since I’m a part of such a manly sport, she worries how will I get good proposals. My sister did so too, however I by no means gave up,” she says.

“My brother stood up for me and informed my mom that I’m excelling in my ardour. He requested her to let me stay my life.”

Khan is comparatively younger, so marriage is just not a priority for now. However she has heard family members whisper to her mom: “It’s in all probability only a section. She ought to concentrate on her research.”

Earlier than going to a mela, Khan tries to search out out particulars concerning the organisers. With the occasions usually spanning two or three days, she additionally asks whether or not there are separate enclosures for girls. Most driving fields have none or few restrooms or areas for prayers for girls.

In Pakistan, tent pegging is especially performed in northern Punjab, the place villages and spacious fields stretch alongside the Ravi River, permitting the horses to freely run.

Khan says many ladies have reached out to her eager to pursue tent pegging. However most of them don’t have household assist. After which there are monetary and structural obstacles, which compound girls’s lack of entry to the game.

“Not everybody has the privilege of proudly owning a horse, particularly girls, who’re already restricted by society,” Ibrahim says.

Even when you’ll be able to personal one, there’s a vital value connected to their repairs. A horse’s month-to-month feed averages 30,000 to 35,000 Pakistani rupees ($107 to $125), which is sort of the month-to-month minimal wage in Punjab. Caretaker charges and rental prices greater than double that quantity.

“It’s a category factor. The whole lot associated to horses is,” Khan says. A sporting horse prices about $1,500 in Pakistan.

Shakoor agrees. She says she was in a position to purchase a horse after saving from her month-to-month wage as a supervisor for a world microfinance community. “You’ll be able to’t put a worth on ardour,” she says, utilizing a Punjabi saying.

She says she places her horse at the beginning, even her personal meals or well being. “If I’m sick, I don’t care about my drugs,” she says. “However I lose sleep if my horse is sick.”

However the excessive value of the game additionally means many alternatives are misplaced. Shakoor says she has missed a number of tent-pegging occasions as a result of she couldn’t afford to haul her horse throughout cities for a number of days of competitions.

“Had I had any monetary assist by sponsorship, I’d not have missed these occasions,” she says.

For Barsa’s occasion alone, Shakoor’s crew spent greater than 100,000 rupees ($358), which included the price of transporting 5 horses, their feed and lodging.

Equally, on the nationwide tent pegging trials, each rider should convey their very own horse, a rule that shuts out anybody who can’t afford transport, not to mention personal a horse.

Awan, the 32-year-old mom of two youngsters, used to journey horses as a passion and started visiting melas to watch how tent pegging was performed. Intrigued by the game, she reached out to Shakoor on Instagram, asking to develop into a member of Bint-e-Zahra.

In recent times, movies that includes feminine riders have gained hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram and TikTok, typically surpassing their male counterparts. Khan and Zoya Mir, the vice captain of the nationwide tent pegging crew, run joint TikTok and Instagram accounts, Equestrians In Inexperienced, the place they put up about their sporting victories.

Some movies present the ladies taking part in neza baazi in gradual movement, selecting up a peg mid-gallop or rising from clouds of mud dressed of their membership’s gear, usually set to modern music and paired with captions that problem the stereotypical affiliation of horse driving with males. A few of these movies have hundreds of thousands of views.

However the social media visibility additionally comes at a price.

Khan remembers a viral video of ladies riders carrying turbans at a mela, inflicting a backlash from veteran male riders who claimed “girls have been polluting the game.”

The turban, historically worn by males as a mark of their social place in addition to a defining a part of a horse rider’s identification, takes on an added significance in neza baazi. For some, girls carrying it’s seen as a problem to an area lengthy related to male authority.

However the riders on the Rawalpindi mela push forward regardless of the vitriol. They put on their turbans with delight – Awan tying hers over a purple niqab that covers half of her face whereas Shakoor has hers pulled low, the best way her mentor taught her.

Shakoor pulls up a photograph from her Instagram account, which has greater than 8,000 followers. Two riders carrying turbans pluck a peg aspect by aspect. The dip of their lances, the slight sway of their our bodies, the second of raise are all almost equivalent.

“This can be a image of me with my mentor Chaudry Nazakat Hussain, my true inspiration,” she says. “He inspired me to create Bint-e-Zahra.”

Final 12 months, a mela held in Jathli in Rawalpindi’s Tehsil Gujjar Khan had 50 collaborating groups with almost 200 riders – all male besides Shakoor, Ibrahim and Malik. Representing the Bint-e-Zahra Membership, Shakoor fought her means into the final seven within the crew captains’ spherical, which is a latest addition in melas by which the captain of every membership runs for a place.

Shakoor, the one lady among the many remaining seven qualifying riders, didn’t safe a place however considers being included a feat nonetheless. “Within the captains’ spherical, horses are assigned to riders randomly. This minimises odds of performing higher. A sportsman is understood for his or her ability, not their horse,” she says.

Of all the teachings the game has taught her, Shakoor says probably the most precious has been braveness.

“This can be a sport of the courageous. In the event you don’t have the guts for it, it’s not for you,” she says. “Ardour and dedication haven’t any gender. … We don’t wish to show we’re higher than males. We solely need equal respect.”