DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — In a private gym tucked away in the warren of villas in the ritzy Jumeirah district here, Amna Al Haddad, a 22-year-old, adjusted her head scarf, bent to a dumbbell rack and jerked 100 pounds, roughly her body weight, into the air.

“I can lift a boy up,” she said.

Al Haddad is one of 12 women who train as competitive weight lifters in the United Arab Emirates, combating the stigma of lifting as a “man’s sport” in the Arab country, whose local population — despite the presence of bikini-clad foreigners for decades — holds to its conservative Muslim tradition.

Weight lifting is often confused with bodybuilding in the Emirates and women who take part are often seen as masculine, or lesbian, which is a crime in the U.A.E.

In the summer, Khadija Mohammed, 17, became the first female Emirati lifter to make the Olympics.

More conservative Emiratis say the sport “should be for a man, that your body will be changed,” said Faisal al-Hammadi, the secretary-general for the U.A.E. Weightlifting Federation.