Shahina Hanif always wanted to be a physiotherapist, but for a long time it seemed her ambition would remain unfulfilled. Brought up in a conservative Muslim community in Sheffield, she wasn’t encouraged to go on to higher education.
Instead, Hanif married young, started a family and became a fitness instructor. Even that involved overcoming barriers. “Muslim girls don’t become fitness instructors. It’s not something that is in our culture,” she says. She loved the work, however, and took the opportunity to run a class for older women, educating women from her own community about the importance of taking exercise.
