Hudaibia Iftikhar

In Pakistani society’s dominance belongs to men and in this situation a girl has to be physically and mentally strong enough to cope with it, said Parkha Saeed, a self defense and fitness trainer from Peshawar. This correlation of physical and mental training gives a strong intuition of harm, and she can mentally be active to deal with the harm by different measures including calling police, cry out loud for help from the passersby, learning kick and punch techniques and keeping weapon for self-defense.

Self-defense offers a number of benefits to anybody, but in particular it can be extremely beneficial for women to learn how to defend themselves. They need to learn self defense now more than ever. Self-defense will allow women to build up self confidence and will allow them to empower themselves and will make them competent enough to find safety in difficult situations.

Parkha, while throwing light on advantages of self-defense training, assumes that such training is specifically important for working ladies as the workplace for working women can be a horrible place to survive. She either has to zip her mouth to continue her job or the worse scenario is the continuation of job despite the insecurities.

Ms Perkha told TNN that she plays a vital role in female defense and conducts sessions with them which include strength training, self-defense posture techniques which ultimately give them emotional confidence to defend themselves.

On the other hand, everyday either on social media or on Television, we are hearing about women being victimized. These can be the stories of women that are sexually violence or a random attack by the strangers as well as being abused in some way. The world is altering and becoming more capricious in particular for women. In such cases self-defense training is one of the most needed and must for every woman’s to do list.

“It is important for women to keep a knife, or other self-defense weapons with her, the majority of the females can’t even let others know about issues they face, therefore, it is necessary to train females physically and mentally both at their younger ages”, said Sara Ali from Peshawar.

She further explained that she herself is an lawyer but still faces plenty of harassment issues outside home due to which she used to keep a knife in her bag for safety. The self-defense training is necessary so that the women can resist any kind of sexual assault as well as random attacks.

Till now, women in our society are not able to get equal rights and they are probably restricted to do their responsibilities. The women fail to protect themselves when they feel any kind of harassment and random attack and the main reason behind this failure is the fear. The females would not be able to do anything for themselves until or unless they work on themselves and defeat their internal fear.

Laiba, 15 from Peshawar had the courage to see the injustice that the women are facing in our society since her childhood. She while talking to TNN said that she used to attend the karate classes at school from four years of age but when she reached third class her karate classes come to an end in her school on the pretext that such games were not for girls.

“At that time I realized that the women if not get their rights and not even able to protect herself then the harassment or rape cases will go on the rise day by day, I didn’t lose hope and keep on getting self-defense training and now I am representing KP as the first and youngest karate queen from all across the country”, she said.

Self-defense training is not only essential for women to defend themselves but also give them confidence to move through society more liberally, rather than forever relying on the protection of a brother or male partner.