

In Iran, TV channels – which are all state-run – do not broadcast most women’s sports competitions due to restrictions on showing women’s bodies. But thanks to social media, Iranian women are covering women’s sports themselves. They film the matches with their mobile phones, and then publish highlights on dedicated pages. Thanks to their efforts, fans can follow the exploits of star athletes in many disciplines, especially those most popular in Iran: football, futsal and volleyball.

Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, women’s sports became a sensitive subject. For many years, they were in a gray zone; they were not officially banned, but were heavily restricted in practice.

A sensitive question

Starting in the 1990s, women’s sports gradually found a foothold, leading Iranian women to compete in regional Asian competitions as well as in the Olympics, in sports like taekwondo and kabaddi. In 2016, an Iranian women won an Olympic medal for the first time in history – a bronze medal in taekwondo.

Nevertheless, women’s sports remain a sensitive question for the Iranian government. Women are still banned from taking part in international competitions for many sports, like swimming, wrestling or boxing.

>>READ MORE ON THE OBSERVERS: Iranian men barred from watching female futsal match

There are even restrictions on women bicycling in public. Two years ago, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued a religious order that placed important limits on female cyclists. He said that women should not bike in the streets, and that instead they should bike in all-female environments, like women-only parks and stadiums. This led to protests and confrontations between women cyclists and police all over the country. Today, women cycling in public is tolerated in some cities, but not in more conservative parts of Iran.

Since TV stations don’t broadcast most women’s competitions, Iranian women are compensating by posting their photos and videos of competitions to social media. There are many different accounts and pages, like Footlady, which has about 40,000 followers between Instagram and Telegram, or Varzesh Banovan (“Sports Women”), which has about 95,000 followers on the same social media platforms.

A few years ago, nobody would have recognized top female athletes on the street – like for example Fereshteh Karimi, Iran’s futsal superstar. But today, that’s no longer the case.

Two Iranian women's futsal teams face off in the Iranian women's championship in Ifsahan. The graphics on the video are not the work of a TV channel - they are added by the volunteers who run Footlady.





“This is made possible by a network of women”

Last week, Iranian authorities let journalists take photos of a friendly football match between Iranian and Jordanian women’s teams in Tehran. Sports journalists that spoke to France 24 said they were not sure whether this was an exception, or a new policy that will continue.