QUOTE
In India, women see boxing as ticket to middle-class life
http://themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/s...ddle-class-life
TRIVANDRUM, India, Aug 26 — The girls punched hard. From across India they came to this big, steamy government-run gym. Before entering the boxing ring, they bowed their heads to the floor, as though entering a temple. A sweet-shop owner’s daughter let loose a right hook. A construction worker’s daughter leaned against the rope, streams of sweat dripping from her face.
Bouncing, ducking, like a grasshopper on speed, was a short girl from Calcutta with close-set eyes; she had forsaken her sister’s wedding for a chance to come here and fight. The thud of glove against glove echoed against the cavernous walls.
In a country with numerous obstacles for them, young women are gearing up to punch in the big league.
The International Olympic Committee earlier this month announced the entry of women’s boxing in the 2012 London Games. India was among the countries pushing to break the gender bar.
“This is my dream come true,” Mangte Chungneijang Merykom, 27, India’s most acclaimed boxer, better known as Mary Kom, said this week.
Kom is India’s greatest hope in the boxing competition. Since the International Boxing Association launched the women’s world championships in 2001, Kom holds the record with four gold medals.
With relatively little support from the government, Indian women have performed surprisingly well in the world championships. China is India’s stiffest competitor. In the last championships, held in Ningbo City, China, the home team won 11 medals, followed by Russia’s 5, and 4 each by India and the United States.
Kom, having just returned from a training camp in Beijing, was quick to explain why. Even the coaches in China are fit, she said, and athletes are served meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. India’s modest sports camps serve meat or fish once a day. The athletes wash their own clothes by hand. There are no dedicated physical therapists for boxers who are injured.
No matter. Boxing represents a new kind of freedom to the women who entered this steamy, old-fashioned ring on India’s southern tip.
Hema Yogesh, 16, a spice farmer’s daughter, ran away from home to join her first boxing camp. Her father was furious at first. But soon, she brought home her first gold medal from a state competition. Her schoolmates showered her with garlands and cheers. Her father, she recalled, burst out in tears. She did too. He now wants her to compete internationally.
Boxing, Hema said, had taught her “courage.”
It also fuelled ambition. Like most of the girls at this camp, Hema sees boxing as a ticket to a middle-class life. The Indian government rewards athletes with coveted government employment, usually in the police or railways. No one in Hema’s family has ever had a government job.
What would life be like without boxing, Hema was asked. She would have had to stay at home, she said, and look after the family’s two cows. She made a face.
For other women, boxing brings less tangible rewards: the confidence to go out on the streets without fear, for instance. Or as a boxer named Usha Nagisetty put it, a chance to be somebody.
“Before boxing, I had nothing,” said Nagisetty, 24, who came to train this summer at another camp, in the central Indian city of Bhopal. “Who is Usha? No one knew. I was fat. I was average in studies. I didn’t think life had anything to offer me.”
The rise of women’s boxing comes amid a great churning in the lives of ordinary Indian women.
Preeti Beniwal, a 22-year-old boxer from Hisar, a small north Indian town, traced the change in her own family. In her mother’s time, for a decent marriage prospect, young women were expected to know how to knit and cook. Today, she said, the premium is on a woman who can earn a living. “Today’s generation is different,” Beniwal said. “If a girl is self-dependent she will get a good home, a good husband.”
Beniwal sees boxing as her ticket to independence. But she also hedges her bets. “If we fail in this field,” she said, meaning sports, “we should know a woman’s primary work.” By that she meant being a wife and mother. Beniwal’s home state of Haryana is notorious for another gender gap. The practice of female feticide — or aborting a girl child in the womb — has become so prevalent that it has radically skewed the sex ratio. In parts of Haryana and nearby north Indian states, there are fewer than 9 girls for every 10 boys.
http://themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/s...ddle-class-life
TRIVANDRUM, India, Aug 26 — The girls punched hard. From across India they came to this big, steamy government-run gym. Before entering the boxing ring, they bowed their heads to the floor, as though entering a temple. A sweet-shop owner’s daughter let loose a right hook. A construction worker’s daughter leaned against the rope, streams of sweat dripping from her face.
Bouncing, ducking, like a grasshopper on speed, was a short girl from Calcutta with close-set eyes; she had forsaken her sister’s wedding for a chance to come here and fight. The thud of glove against glove echoed against the cavernous walls.
In a country with numerous obstacles for them, young women are gearing up to punch in the big league.
The International Olympic Committee earlier this month announced the entry of women’s boxing in the 2012 London Games. India was among the countries pushing to break the gender bar.
“This is my dream come true,” Mangte Chungneijang Merykom, 27, India’s most acclaimed boxer, better known as Mary Kom, said this week.
Kom is India’s greatest hope in the boxing competition. Since the International Boxing Association launched the women’s world championships in 2001, Kom holds the record with four gold medals.
With relatively little support from the government, Indian women have performed surprisingly well in the world championships. China is India’s stiffest competitor. In the last championships, held in Ningbo City, China, the home team won 11 medals, followed by Russia’s 5, and 4 each by India and the United States.
Kom, having just returned from a training camp in Beijing, was quick to explain why. Even the coaches in China are fit, she said, and athletes are served meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. India’s modest sports camps serve meat or fish once a day. The athletes wash their own clothes by hand. There are no dedicated physical therapists for boxers who are injured.
No matter. Boxing represents a new kind of freedom to the women who entered this steamy, old-fashioned ring on India’s southern tip.
Hema Yogesh, 16, a spice farmer’s daughter, ran away from home to join her first boxing camp. Her father was furious at first. But soon, she brought home her first gold medal from a state competition. Her schoolmates showered her with garlands and cheers. Her father, she recalled, burst out in tears. She did too. He now wants her to compete internationally.
Boxing, Hema said, had taught her “courage.”
It also fuelled ambition. Like most of the girls at this camp, Hema sees boxing as a ticket to a middle-class life. The Indian government rewards athletes with coveted government employment, usually in the police or railways. No one in Hema’s family has ever had a government job.
What would life be like without boxing, Hema was asked. She would have had to stay at home, she said, and look after the family’s two cows. She made a face.
For other women, boxing brings less tangible rewards: the confidence to go out on the streets without fear, for instance. Or as a boxer named Usha Nagisetty put it, a chance to be somebody.
“Before boxing, I had nothing,” said Nagisetty, 24, who came to train this summer at another camp, in the central Indian city of Bhopal. “Who is Usha? No one knew. I was fat. I was average in studies. I didn’t think life had anything to offer me.”
The rise of women’s boxing comes amid a great churning in the lives of ordinary Indian women.
Preeti Beniwal, a 22-year-old boxer from Hisar, a small north Indian town, traced the change in her own family. In her mother’s time, for a decent marriage prospect, young women were expected to know how to knit and cook. Today, she said, the premium is on a woman who can earn a living. “Today’s generation is different,” Beniwal said. “If a girl is self-dependent she will get a good home, a good husband.”
Beniwal sees boxing as her ticket to independence. But she also hedges her bets. “If we fail in this field,” she said, meaning sports, “we should know a woman’s primary work.” By that she meant being a wife and mother. Beniwal’s home state of Haryana is notorious for another gender gap. The practice of female feticide — or aborting a girl child in the womb — has become so prevalent that it has radically skewed the sex ratio. In parts of Haryana and nearby north Indian states, there are fewer than 9 girls for every 10 boys.