Passing the Blame: Gendered Violence and FIFA in Iran
I was reading the news when I happened upon information I was appalled by. The Human Rights Watch published a report with the headline “Iran: Women Blocked From Entering Stadium,” and I was instantly intrigued; it sounded very archaic in nature, but misogyny and discrimination against women is happening around the world. I was blinded by the privilege I am afforded as a white woman in Canada.
In Mashhad, Iran, on March 29, 2022, authorities prevented many Iranian women from entering the Imam Reza football stadium, where the final match of the Qatar World Cup qualifications between Iran and Lebanon was being held. It was reported that those who were prevented from entering included women who had already purchased tickets. According to the ISNA news agency, out of the 12,500 fans who purchased tickets, approximately 2,000 of them were purchased by women. The women who gathered in front of the stadium were shut out, with authorities going so far as to use pepper spray and tear gas to disperse them. Many social media videos and posts circulated on the internet of these human rights abuses. Women were seen washing their faces with water and using cigarette smoke to try and counteract the effects of teargas as well. The women were simply chanting peacefully in protest when they were faced with responses from police.
According to Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, “Iranian authorities have repeatedly demonstrated they are willing to go to great lengths to enforce their discriminatory and cruel ban on women attending football stadiums. Given Iranian authorities’ long-standing violations, FIFA needs to follow its global guidelines on nondiscrimination and should consider enforcing penalties for Iran’s noncompliance.”
It felt like salt in the wound to read that not a day later the Iranian Football Federation declared that this simply occurred “due to a lack of preparation,” resulting in their inability to accommodate the women and that they even claimed other than nine tickets, the rest of those were not purchased by women and, without the proof of evidence, the rest of the tickets were “fakes” distributed among fans. Part of the insanity associated with this is that the selling of tickets to women is allowed, while they are not allowed in the stadium and they cannot receive compensation for the money lost based on these rules.
Their claims feel extremely fake considering behaviours like bans barring women from sports in stadiums have been recorded for forty years. Though it is not regulated, these actions are enforced as if it were one with real consequences for women who attempt to disobey the unspoken rules. Among various punishments, they may be arrested, beaten, or placed in detention. In a famous case where a female football fan was rejected entrance in September 2019, she was sentenced to jail for attempting entrance and to avoid said punishment she died by self-immolation.
After all of this chaos, in October of 2019, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) set a hard deadline that Iranian authorities must allow women to enter football stadiums. FIFA has statutes that state that discrimination on account of gender is “strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.” Following this, the Iranian government did allow some women to attend a World Cup qualifier following the statement laid out by FIFA, but after this, they have restricted allowing women into sports matches at stadiums, unless for rare occasions such as political gatherings.
As much as what is occurring is the fault of Iranian authorities, FIFA should use their powerful position to demand that Iran’s discriminatory stadium ban on women be overturned and that they are held accountable for abuse. If FIFA does not demonstrate that they have this situation under control, other countries may learn that FIFA does not hold countries responsible for their actions. FIFA should ban Iran from the World Cup to show that they are serious about the situation. Sepehri Far said it well when she stated that, “it is long overdue for FIFA to demonstrate that it is serious in enforcing transparent accountability measures to ensure women in Iran can watch games like their peers all over the world.”