Fatima Saleem’s Journey to Empower Girls Through Sports
By McCord Pagan, Montana Jinkins and Nicholas Bashore
Being an athlete often means being part of something greater than the individual. Sports have the potential to help people unlock their inner strength and allow them to establish a sense of pride in their accomplishments both on and off the field. Confidence from participation in sports often inevitably spreads to the rest of an athlete’s life, and for some, can be life-changing.
Fatima Saleem has taken this potential from sports and worked to channel that ability to uplift others in her own community.
Saleem is one of nearly 200 million people who call Pakistan home, a country where women’s roles have traditionally been defined in the household. Here, they face social pressure, stereotypes, early marriages. Saleem is trying to change those cultural norms to better her country.
In Pakistan, not many young girls are passionate about sports — because sports aren’t seen as a path to a successful future for women. Instead, many of these young girls are raised to be good wives and questioned for establishing a voice, especially as an individual athlete.
Just 14 percent of the general population plays sports across the country; four percent are women. There’s little infrastructure in terms of sports facilities, and female coaches are all but non-existent. Without proper education, Saleem doesn’t believe they will be able to overcome what she sees as shortcoming in Pakistani culture.
These questions are what inspired Saleem to become involved with the U.S. State Department and espnW Global Sports Mentoring Program.
In 2013, Saleem flew to the United States with 15 other women for the international exchange program. This initiative challenged the women to create a project in their home countries to get more girls and young women involved in sports.
After the program, she took home what she learned and used it to form her own organization, Go Girl Pakistan, which promotes the empowerment of young women through sports.
As someone affiliated with sports during her career, Saleem is familiar with the criticism a woman receives in the field. During an interview with espnW, she explained some of those adversities she dealt with while reporting.
“A women with a mic and a camera talking about sports? People didn’t accept it at first. They didn’t take me seriously. I got a lot of hate mail on social media, especially being a women wearing my blazers and Western clothes talking about sports,” said Saleem.
But the harsh response from fans was not the only hurdle Saleem had to overcome as a woman involved in the sports industry, she also had her background from Pakistan. This was a culture that highly values women working in the home as the norm.
“Women start working in the home from a very young age instead of hitting the playground,” said Saleem. “So they have no idea what they are missing. Those who do play sports find themselves lacking support, venues where they can follow modesty dress codes, properly trained coaches and other female teammates.”
This was a new concept for the Pakistani people because of their deeply ingrained social customs, where women were obligated to make and maintain a home.
“You know, lots of girls don’t go to school and then if I go talk to these girls one question they always ask is, “Why should we play sports? What am I getting from it? Why should I be given a voice?” Saleem said.
Many of these young girls who are between 5 and 17 years old are working as maids in people’s homes, which Saleem considers to be one of the main problems. There is also the adherent family responsibility.
“You know a mother will say, “If my daughter stats playing sports then who will take care of the family?” You know if you just look at the sterotypes and obviously early marriages where a 15 year old girl will get married and an 18 year old will probably have 3 kids. These are just some of the challenges that Pakistani young girls face.”
To many these norms may seem like a huge anchor, but for Saleem this was a reason for her to push Go Girl Pakistan even further. She wanted to create more facilities in Pakistani schools for girls to safely get an education and practice sports.
As a reporter and a Pakistani native, Saleem was able to see the benefits that a program like Go Girl Pakistan could provide, such as mentors for young girls.
“There is a lack of mentors in Pakistan. I didn’t have a mentor growing up like you all have and that’s one thing I learned in the US, that every girl in school has mentors to look up to,” said Saleem.
As part of the Global Sports Mentoring Program, Saleem was mentored by Jodi Markley, a senior vice-president at ESPN. Having never had a mentor before, Saleem said her relationship with Markley helped her establish her own identity.
“Jodi gave me independence to thing, to make judgements, or to make my own decisions,” Saleem said. “I am not the Fatima that I was anymore. It’s because, it’s because of [Markley], its all because of her.”
Go Girl Pakistan started when Saleem began reaching out to schools in Karachi, helping provide coaches, equipment, reading material and female doctors for regular check-ups to the students. Additionally, the schools provided time for young girls (aged five-eleven) to become involved in the opportunity — while the coaches from Go Girl Pakistan became mentors to the girls.
“My mission is simple I want girls to fall in love with sports because you can take the girl out of a sport, but you can’t take the sport out of the girl. I want to provide mentors at every level… [a] platform to express themselves and feel safe like you guys gave me a space, I felt safe to express what I want.”
Saleem had planned to utilize sponsorship's to keep the program running and expanding to new schools, however due to funding constraints the program encountered a rough patch last year.
In January, Go Girl Pakistan was set to start back up with new grant funding and expand to new schools each month. But a terrorist attack in December 2014, the Peshawar attack, and more violence followed, which included grenades being thrown near a school in Karachi, stopping all progress at Saleem’s organization.
“It’s not safe to have children, especially girls, out on open fields. We must put these children’s safety first,” Saleem said during an interview with ESPN.
But Pakistani children continued to offer Saleem hope.
Just three weeks after Peshawar, many children, some of whom were still wearing bandages, showed up once again for school. They were determined not to be dominated by fear, and instead continued to work towards their futures.
Saleem credits this to the “Malala Effect” after Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winning teenager who was nearly killed by Islamic extremists for speaking out about education for girls. (In fact, Malala herself recently sang the praises of Go Girl Pakistan on its Facebook page.)
While the effects of some grave adversities stand in the way of children in Pakistan, especially young women, trying to get an education and become involved in sports; kids continue to learn and play.
“We have thousands of Malalas now,” Saleem said. “And all of them want to continue to learn and move forward.”
And Saleem is not alone in her drive to use sports to advance girls and women. Kelsey Campbell describes a “revolution in women’s athletic’s” in this Foreign Policy article, laying out the complex crossroads between gender identity, culture and religion. The fact that the controversy exists is evidence of an environment of change, and provides that much more solace that programs like Saleem’s will become the norm.
