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အတိုချုံးပြောရရင်
After Kenya’s post-election violence in 2008, when many young women were sexually abused and traumatized, Boxgirls Kenya used boxing to fight the shaming, stigma, and fear they experienced.
We are as small as the hummingbird, but we are focused, effective, and unstoppable risk takers.
— Boxgirls
After Kenya’s post-election violence in 2008, when many young women were sexually abused and traumatized, an organization called Boxgirls Kenya began using boxing as a strategic entry point for providing young women with a powerful antidote to the shaming, stigma, and fear generated by the oppression that they experience.
We use boxing to free girls and young women from fear.
Most of the young women living in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, are children of rural migrants. Their parents are often away most of the day for work, leaving young girls to care for themselves and their siblings; the schools are poorly equipped; there are no facilities or activities for young people. All this leads to a situation where young women are vulnerable to sexual abuse.
In response, many have found in boxing a safe space to learn self-defence and an entry point for addressing issues related to sex and sexuality, leadership skills, money management, health, and well-being. Boxing has proven to be a powerful tool for equipping girls and young women to protect themselves and ensure their security while boosting self-esteem and building confidence. The initiative has even trained the first female Olympic boxer in Kenyan history, Elizabeth Andiego.
This work has been led by a community-based organization called Boxgirls Kenya, which aims to empower young women to understand the insecurities they are exposed to and to discuss strategies for dealing with them, so they can grow up free to love themselves. Boxgirls speaks movingly of the role boxing plays in the bout for a better world:
“Boxing is a strategy, power, and knowledge framework that creates an alternative world in which girls and young women’s bodies are protected and their security assured. We use it to free girls and young women from fear.”
Participants consistently report increased confidence, sense of agency, critical perspective, and willingness and ability to speak out and act against discrimination. It has strengthened young women’s leadership and confidence as citizens and political actors, inspiring them to educate, organize, and empower themselves and other young women to address problems together and challenge violence in every aspect of their lives. Finally, it has become a way to influence and inform the public, parents, schools, and local leaders, and hence change public discourse, attitudes, and behaviour.
Originally published in Beautiful Rising.
အဓိကသီအိုရီ
In her introduction to Changing Their World: Concepts and Practices of Women’s Movements (Association of Women’s Rights in Development [AWID], 2008), Srilatha Batliwala argues for an understanding of feminism as:
“an ideology and an analytical framework that is both broader and sharper than it was in the 60s and 70s . . . . We now stand not only for gender equality, but for the transformation of all social relations of power that oppress, exploit, or marginalize any set of people, women and men, on the basis of their gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, race, religion, nationality, location, class, caste, or ethnicity . . . . We seek a transformation that would create gender equality within an entirely new social order — one in which both men and women can individually and collectively live as human beings in societies built on social and economic equality, enjoy the full range of rights, live in harmony with the natural world, and are liberated from violence, conflict and militarization” (Batliwala 2008).
အဓိကအခြေခံမူများ
Boxing serves to politicize gender oppression by operating according to the feminist maxim “the personal is political.” By fostering a safe space (see: PRINCIPLE: Foster safer spaces) for girls and women to share experiences and identify common challenges, participants begin to understand that their personal struggles are the consequences of an abusive and patriarchal social structure which they must work together to dismantle.
In Nairobi, boxing is used as an entry point for discussing difficult topics related to sex and sexuality, as well as addressing issues related to violence against women. It’s hard sometimes to directly confront controversial political issues, but when it is grounded in something as personal and physical as boxing, people have a greater chance of opening up. Sports have broad appeal, especially to youth; they seem non-political and less threatening. Boxgirls took those attractive qualities and provided a gateway to engage deeply in political issues that affected them.