Madiha Khan’s life was upended three years ago when an illness left her husband partially paralyzed. The 33-year-old from a middle-class Karachi neighborhood suddenly found herself struggling to look after school-age children and a bed-ridden spouse, with no income.

The cost of commuting in a rickshaw between home, school and hospital was digging into the family’s dwindling finances. Taking decrepit public buses meant long waits and putting up with harassment from men on the streets, a common experience for many lone women in Pakistan.

“I would have gone bankrupt with our little savings going towards high rickshaw fares,” Khan said.

So, despite strong opposition from her husband’s relatives who warned it would dishonor the family, Khan decided she would start riding his motorcycle.

While women riding two-wheelers is relatively common in neighboring India, they were unheard of until just a few years ago due to conservative social taboos that effectively banned the practice. Many women even avoided riding a bicycle in public.

But now a growing number of Pakistani women are flouting those norms and learning to ride despite ridicule and even threats of violence.

Many have taken up lessons at the Pink Riders motorcycle training institute, founded five years ago by Payyam-e-Khurram.

Only a handful of women were riding two-wheelers in Pakistan back then, but the institute’s graduates are now closing in on 10,000 and still growing, said Khurram, a 45-year-old entrepreneur from Karachi.

Inspired by trips to other parts of Asia, the idea for a training institute came to him when his mother was hospitalized in intensive care. Her care nurse finished her shift at 6 a.m. but the woman would stay on an extra two hours because she feared for her safety going home in the dark.

Since she couldn’t afford a car, he suggested that she buy a motorcycle — a proposition that flabbergasted her.

“I asked her, ‘Do you run your house?’ She said, yes,” Khurram explained. “I retorted, ‘If you can run a whole household, why can’t you ride a motorcycle?'”

A few months later, Khurram talked with more working women about mobility issues and posted on Facebook that he was going to train them to ride.

Despite being met with ridicule, Khurram held the country’s first-ever women’s bike rally in Karachi in 2019, with more than 100 riders taking part.

Today, Pink Riders is in five cities with another branch set to open. The institute also offers self-defense classes to counter safety concerns.

While much of the opposition has been in the form of family disapproval or harassment on the street, Pink Riders have also been confronted by armed thugs and, in at least one case, threatened with an acid attack

Parveen Bibi, a 40-year-old cook, said she frequently spots women riding bikes during rush hour in bustling Karachi, a practice that she frowns upon due to its immodest “appearance.” Male members of her family disapprove of Bibi’s niece riding a bike, saying she is going against religious beliefs in the Muslim country of more than 230 million.

Still, the harassment has dropped off over time, if not disappeared, and now even the police who once badgered female riders are sending their own officers to Pink Riders for training, Khurram said.

Sadia Awan admits she has lost marriage proposals from potential suitors’ families after they learned she rides a motorbike. The reaction on the streets, however, is largely positive.

“When men know that a woman can go against the grain and ride a bike, they will know she can also break your jaw if you tease her,” joked the 30-year-old content writer.

Being able to hop on her own bike has given Zakia Jawwad the flexibility to distribute parcels from her online clothing business instead of relying on dodgy delivery services that would flee with customers’ payments.

“It was a hassle waiting for the delivery men to arrive,” said the 38-year-old. “They would charge anywhere from 300 to 350 rupees ($1.05 to $1.20) for delivery, and sometimes even pocketed the money.”

Pakistan is taking some steps to address the mobility challenges faced by women.

In Sindh province, a new women-only bus service has been launched, while the central government is allocating funds for an initiative that gives working women easier access to scooters at subsidized prices.

Still, women on motorbikes remain a rare sight on Pakistan’s roads, and boosting their numbers will require a change of attitude, Khurram said.

“Don’t make them a celebrity. Don’t give them a thumbs up or take selfies with them when you encounter them on the roads,” he added. “Ignore them. Make them normal.”