Utne
March 2, 2005
Let the Games Begin
Women’s athletics gain support in Iran
By Barb Jacobs, Utne.com
February 3, 2005 Issue
Last week, Tehran’s women’s swim team beat Armenia and Qatar for
a gold medal at the fourth annual All-Women Games for Muslim and
Asian Capitals. The Iranian women also received a gold medal in
taekwando at the event, which was held in Tehran and attended by some
600 competitors from 17 countries. Sound surprising? It shouldn’t.
The All-Women Games were started in 1993 by Faezeh Hashemi, the vice
president of Iran’s National Olympic Committee, as a way for Iranian
women to participate in sports while maintaining their religious
beliefs and laws. In the past, one of the reasons Iranian women were
not able to participate in sports was because of their country’s
strict dress code. So that women can compete in sports-appropriate
clothing at the All Women affair, men are banned from observing or
officiating all events except for “shooting.”
Hashemi has had a significant effect on women’s athletics in Iran. In
addition to starting the All-Women Games, she also campaigned for
an Iranian women’s football program. Iran’s Football Association has
since agreed to let Iran’s Women’s Football Association use the same
training complex the men’s national team uses for a 10-day women’s
training camp, provided the men are gone during that time.
Michael Theodoulou reports in the Christian Science Monitor that sports
such as mountaineering, golf, skiing, and paragliding are all popular
with Iranian women because they are “activities in which the need to
keep the body well covered is not a serious hindrance to performance.”
Last year, the Iran Mountaineering Federation challenged women climbers
in Iran to take on Everest — 69 women responded. The group, which
needs to raise $400,000 for the expedition, plans on scaling the peak
in May. Theodoulou explains that “success would put the team in an
elite as rarefied as the atmosphere at the mountain’s 8,850-meter
summit.” No Muslim women, and fewer than 100 women from the world
over, have ever reached the summit of Mount Everest, which is the
world’s tallest peak.
Although women in sports still stirs controversy in Iran, it has the
support of many Iranian men. During the opening ceremony for the
Games, parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel said that sports
are an important part of a healthy society and “we want to show to
the worlds that Muslim women can be active in sporting fields while
observing morals.” He also pointed out that, “we want to prove that
the Islamic Republic can develop women’s sports without making a copy
of other nations’ programs since it has the capacity to promote sports
among women and observe the Islamic dress code at the same time.”