Iranian women attend first World Cup screening in nearly 40 years
As Iran’s national team faced Spain on Wednesday in Iran's second 2018 World Cup match, Iranian women entered Tehran’s largest stadium to watch a screening of the game for the first time since a year after the country’s 1979 revolution, NBC News reports.
Tehran’s provincial council made the last-minute decision Wednesday morning to allow women to attend the screening after Iran won its first World Cup match since 1998 last week, sending Iranian men and women into the streets for hours of celebration.
Open Stadiums, a group of Iranian women who have been advocating for their right to enter sports stadiums for years, welcomed the announcement. Members were later met by local police upon arriving at Azadi Stadium for the screening at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday local time. Eventually they were let in prior to kickoff.
According to Iran’s state news agency, the decision to let women into the stadium applied only to Wednesday's match, although some women said they hoped that it was a first step to a change in policy.
British-Iranian student and activist Ghoncheh Ghavami, who was present for the historic event, became one of the faces of the movement after she was detained for attending a volleyball match in Tehran in 2015. She was released a year later but was barred from leaving the country for 12 months.
“It was incredible, the first time we saw the stadium there was 100,000 people present,” Ghavami said in an email to NBC News about the Iran-Spain game. “The space was great. Even after the end of the game, people continued to stay in the stadium.”
Women are still not allowed to watch most live sports matches in Iran, and Sara, 34, a member of Open Stadiums, said she did not think the council's decision would change that.
“They seemed to have played with us and the media.” Sara told NBC News, asking that only her first name be used out of fear of arrest in Iran.
Iran is currently the only country participating in the 2018 World Cup games that prohibits women from entering stadiums, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.