Iranian women will be able to attend football matches, following a ruling by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, ISNA news agency reported on Friday.
“Women will be allowed into stadiums,” said Mehdi Taj, head of the Iranian Football Association. “The Supreme Council has made its decision. A working group has been appointed to carry out the project.”
However, not all stadiums will welcome female spectators immediately. “The Gol Gohar stadium in Sirdjan, the Naqsh-e Jahan and Foolad Shahr stadiums in Isfahan, and the Ghadir stadium in Ahvaz are to be opened to female supporters,” Taj said. “The Azadi stadium in Tehran has yet to be fitted out.”
For more than 40 years, the Islamic Republic has generally banned female spectators from attending football matches. The country’s clerics, who play a major role in decision-making, argue that women must be protected from the male atmosphere and the sight of men in sportswear, whose bodies are therefore partially visible.
In recent years, however, women have been admitted on a quota basis to some matches played in the country. In 2018, FIFA president Gianni Infantino requested that the Iranian football federation and the government provide guarantees to allow women to attend national team matches.
Following that request, Iranian women were granted certain quotas. In 2019, around 3,500 women were able to see a 2022 World Cup qualifier against Cambodia. That was the first mass female presence in a stadium in four decades.
One-off initiatives have been repeated since, most notably last March when female supporters were allowed to watch a national team play a friendly match against Russia at the Azadi stadium.
