Iran ‘endangering women’ with gender quota for World Cup qualifier tickets

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The Iranian authorities’ limit on the number of women who can attend a forthcoming World Cup qualifier is discriminatory and is putting female football fans in danger, campaigners have warned.

Human Rights Watch argue the “effective 5 per cent quota” on seats for women violates Fifa’s human rights commitments – noting the highest governing body of football explicitly stipulates its members can be expelled if they are found to treat women unfairly.

The stadium in the country’s capital Tehran has 100,000 seats but the government has only allowed 4,600 women to attend the match between Iran and Cambodia this Thursday.

Iranian women have been barred from watching stadium football matches for most of the 40 years since the Islamic Revolution and have been subjected to beatings and imprisoned for breaking the ban.

“Women are still going to attend the match despite the cap. They will go in dressed as men and potentially suffer beatings while being arrested,” Rothna Begum, senior women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Independent.

The campaigner, who specialises in the Middle East and North Africa, said the woman who died last month after setting herself on fire while faced with a prison sentence for watching a football match, demonstrated why the limit on tickets effectively puts women’s lives at risks.

She added: “The cap on tickets for women means the authorities can decide how they allocate those seats. Last time they allocated seats to women, it went to the upper echelons of society, and we suspect this will happen again with the cap. It is highly unlikely that an ordinary woman will be able to get in.

“The cap is a mockery of women’s rights activists’ demands to access stadiums. It will not satiate them because the cap is far too low and is likely to only go to women from a specific part of society.

“The cap is a token gesture meant to appease Fifa who have been asking Iran to allow women to enter the stadium. Iran is using a sporting event to sports-wash its human rights abuses.”

Ms Begum hit out at Fifa for allowing the cap to go ahead and called for tickets to be allocated on a first come first served basis and gender to play no role – adding that it should just be a “free for all”.

Tickets for the forthcoming match – which marks the first time in four decades women have been legally able to purchase tickets – went on sale on 3 October. More than 3,500 tickets were bought by women, the Iranian Student News Agency estimates.

“We could be facing years of prison,” an Iranian women’s rights activist from OpenStadiums, who wanted to be anonymous, told Human Rights Watch.

“The ‘bearded ladies’ [women in disguise] are out on bail. These women aren’t activists. They are fans who just wanted to attend games. And if they send you to jail, you have a criminal record – even though it’s a criminal record for wanting to go to a football game. But the criminal record follows you everywhere for the rest of your life. When you apply for jobs, you won’t get one, and so on.”

Iran is the only nation in the world where women are barred from entering stadiums to watch football and other sports. The clerical regime has been reported to have hired female security forces since August last year to deal with women who attempt to sneak into the stadium disguised as men.

Human Rights Watch called for Fifa to use its “leverage with the Iranian authorities” to immediately permit women in the country to watch football games.

Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, said: “For many years, Iran’s football federation and government officials have flouted Fifa’s rules on nondiscrimination through intimidation, arrests and outright deception. Fifa should be gravely concerned for the safety of Iranian female fans who put themselves at risk by challenging the discriminatory limits on ticket sales and stadium access.”

Iranian female football players did not take part in the Women’s World Cup this summer even though they won the championship games in Asia. State TV networks in the country do not air any women’s sports.

The Independent has contacted Fifa for comment.