From Mubasher Bukhari
LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani student Laiba Rashid, 22, hopes her life will change when she learns to ride a motorcycle after completing a training program that teaches women to operate two-wheelers in the bustling eastern city of Lahore.
Although the program is 7 years old, it is rare to see women riding motorcycles. Women who drive cars or ride two-wheelers driven by a male relative are more socially acceptable in the conservative, Islamic nation.
“I hope this will change my life because I depend on my brother to pick me up and take me to college,” Rashid told Reuters on her first day in the Women on Wheels (WOW) driving program offered free of charge by the Lahore Traffic Police. .
She said she wanted to buy a motorcycle to go to college, adding that there were no female riders in her family before. “Now everyone is convinced that women should be independent in their movement to schools, jobs and markets,” she said.
Women riding two-wheelers was a cultural and religious taboo, said Bushra Iqbal Hussain, a social activist and director of Safe Childhood, an organization that advocates for the safety of female children.
But more women are now changing the culture, she said, as they did in the 1980s with ordinary cars, in an attempt to reduce their reliance on men for commuting.
The WOW program has been operating since 2017, but has grown in popularity in recent months as car prices have soared and motorcycles offer a cheaper alternative.
“Stagnant wage growth and high inflation have reduced the purchasing power of the middle class, leaving motorcycles as the only viable option for many households,” said auto sector analyst Muhammad Abrar Polani of investment house Arif Habib Limited.
The cheapest four-wheeler in Pakistan, where annual GDP per capita is $1,590, costs about 2.3 million rupees ($8,265), compared with about 115,000 rupees for the most affordable Chinese-made two-wheeler.
Sohail Mudassar, a traffic warden, said the WOW program has trained at least 6,600 women, and Rashid’s group was the 86th since it began.
“Women of different ages and walks of life join our camp,” said trainer Humaira Rafaqat, a senior traffic warden who has trained about 1,000 women. “Young women learn quickly because they are enthusiastic and take risks.”
One of them, Ghania Raza, 23, who is pursuing a PhD in criminology, said learning to ride a two-wheeler gave her a deep sense of achievement and empowerment: “It was like breaking a glass ceiling,” she said.
Shumaila Shafiq, 36, a mother of three and part-time fashion designer, said she rode her husband’s motorcycle to the market and other places after completing the program.
She designed a special short abaya, a dress used by conservative Muslim women, worn while riding a motorcycle.
“Wearing a long, loose-fitting abaya poses a risk because it can get tangled in the wheels,” she said, adding that she intends to market the design to fellow female drivers.
