Iranian Women and Their Fight for Equality- Article Review #2 - Sarah Jump

Iranian Women and Their Fight for Equality

Fozooni, Babak. “Iranian Women and Football.” Cultural Studies 22:1 (2007): 114-133.

            There are many countries in the world that still view women as deserving less as well as being capable of less than a man. Iran is one of these countries. In the scholarly article “Iranian Women and Football” Babak Fazooni brings up many examples of the ways that brave Iranian women have fought for gender equality. Although these women were fighting for their right to enjoy a live football game like their male counterparts, they were actually fighting for more. These women were fighting for their own respect, self-empowerment and equal opportunity.

            Fozooni shares that the struggle for equality has been increasing for a very long time. Women have been segregated in public places including universities and public transport which is only the beginning (Fazooni 115.) Iranian feminists have been pushing to increase the age of consent, access to nurseries, contraceptives, abortion rights, employment opportunities, divorce and inheritance laws, and to add fuel to their fire, participation in sports events tops it all off (Fazooni 115.) This issue is becoming very popular because it is new and very public. There are websites, American newspapers, and many other forms of information going around discussing the absurdity of the issue and empathizing with the Iranian women who are suffering.

            The public eye really set its gaze on the gender discrimination that Iranian leaders displayed in 2006 when the Iranian men’s football team qualified for the World Cup (Fazooni 114.)

The huge celebrations that followed Iran’s qualification for the 2006 World Cup once again witnessed scores of women and young girls disregarding injunctions about the veil and physical contact with the opposite sex. The smaller protests outside the gates of the stadium in Tehran prior to the match involved women carrying placards such as, ‘A few steps to freedom’, and ‘We refuse to remain off-side’! (114.)

When protesting, the Iranian women were really protesting against the patriarchal emphasis on their society and for their own rights rather than simply admission into a football game. Iranian women unite their demand to participate in sport with wage claims much like in 1901, when women working in the Lancashire cotton mills linked the right to suffrage to the removal of discrimination and exploitation and achieved over 29,000 signatures on their petition (Fazooni 116.) Iranian women began enacting their protest in 1997 by breaking into a Tehran stadium and bypassing male security guards in hopes of achieving a looser dress-code and better job prospects in the long run (Fazooni 116.) Although their intensions seemed to be directed at one issue, they were really covering several detrimental issues.

            Although the trend seems to be described by a never ending struggle for women, there is some light at the end of this tunnel. In August of 1998, 40 Iranian women took part in an amateur football training session at Tehran’s Hejab Stadium (Fazooni 123.) Iranian women have also participated in karate, judo, and gymnastics. About 16,000 Iranian women have been trained as trainers and coaches in all sports and some even have taken up the stereotypically masculine sport of motor racing (Fazooni 123). Iranian women see themselves as people who are redefining themselves as champions of freedom against Islamic tyranny and protect this vigorously (Fazooni 124.) The women who identify with the collective identity theorists believe that they need to come to a common understanding of their experiences to resist hegemony (Fazooni 124.) They are standing up for themselves in a way that is honorable, intelligent and admirable and they are making strides towards equality and a better life.

            As a woman who loves to watch hockey, I cannot imagine being turned away from the Joe Louis arena simply because I am a woman. The kind of encouragement and acceptance that I receive while perusing my own sport-loving endeavors is something that I believe every Iranian woman should be able to experience. Although loving sports may break the stereotype barriers of femininity, it does not make women any less of a woman. In the article “Athletic or Sexy? A Comparison of Female Athletes and Fashion Models in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues,” Kayoung Kim and Michael Sagas notice that “swimsuit issues in particular tend to reinforce gender stereotyping, stressing femininity rather than athleticism. That is, the swimsuit issue characterized female models as defenseless, emotionally weak, nature oriented, childlike, and dependent on males (141.)” The woman that Babak Fazooni describes in his article are most definitely defying the stereotypes that deem them fragile in any way. These woman are empowering to each other as well as women who are reading their story from nations all over the world. Fazooni addressed the actions of all of the women described in a very factual, intellectual way. After reading this, I feel empowered and proud to be a woman.