Pakistan, Aug. 2 -- Glasgow has a curious place in Pakistan's boxing memory. Muhammad Waseem won Commonwealth Games silver there in 2014, the country's last boxing medal at the event. Twelve years later, in the same city, Fatima Zahra has taken bronze in the women's 60 kg category and become Pakistan's first female Commonwealth Games boxing medallist.

Pakistan first fielded women boxers internationally only a decade ago. Zahra's medal has come from a programme barely old enough to have a history and still too often treated as an afterthought. Girls with talent for the ring have had to make do with few bouts, patchy camps, uncertain official support and a sporting culture that continues to regard their participation as exceptional. Her re...