In Pakistan, extreme heat has become one more fetter on women’s sports

Pakistani student Aqsa Shabbir is hot, tired and frustrated. A keen field hockey player, she can no longer train during the day because of a brutal heatwave, she can’t sleep at night and she fears she will not play well in a tournament at the end of June.

The 17-year-old, who lives in Jacobabad in the southern Sindh province, already had to overcome many obstacles – like many girls who live in Pakistan’s smaller cities where exercising in public is frowned upon - and the heatwave is making things harder.

Two years ago, Jacobabad was named the hottest city on earth after temperatures reached 51 degrees Celsius. This year, as a heatwave seared southeast Asia, temperatures shot up to 52 degrees Celsius in May.

“We cannot keep waiting for the weather to get better – it won’t,” Shabbir told Context by phone from Jacobabad.

Rising temperatures are one more barrier for women and girls who want to stay active in a country where there are few training spaces available to them, apart from private sports clubs reserved for the wealthy.

A 2022 study found that the main obstacles to participating in sport in the Muslim-majority country are “religious and cultural limitations, a lack of permission from parents, and a lack of sports facilities and equipment”.

Now add extreme heat, linked to...

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