Influential women in sports serve as inspirational force.

ISLAMABAD -- The success of women players in different categories is serving as an inspirational force for many female who are willing to join sports, a rare phenomenon in recent past of the country's sports history.

Athletics, Boxing, Martial Arts, Weight Lifting and Foot Ball were earlier supposed to be taken

as no go areas for women but now the women are valiantly challenging these stereotypes.

'Many of the females are rapidly joining sports arenas to flex their wings to record their worth and also bring laurels for their country,' Nasim Hameed, an athlete who won the title of fastest woman in South Asia said. It was a positive sign that more and more women were joining sports, earlier confined to male's world only, she added.

'Now women are well aware of the importance and value of sports and their interest is increasing day by day', she said.

She viewed that the participation of women in sports was challenging society's conventional approach and discrimination and it was also helping promote gender equality and women empowerment.

Nasim however regretted that prejudice was still prevailing but due to woman's courage and resistance the situation was fast improving in female segment's favour.

'Girls face many social and cultural barriers but with the improved standard of education things are gradually changing' she remarked.

She stressed for availability of exclusive training sessions and suggested for adopting special measures for the promotion of women sports and their encouragement to expose their talent and maximum participation.

President of Wushu Federation Mohammad Iftikhar said 'Today women herself are very optimistic and country's sports influential have encouraged them to join any international sports they want.'

He said his Federation took some solid steps to provide women athletes a fearless environment to grow and for the purpose it introduced female...