After the two-week break for the Iranian New Year (March-April), the first piece of news that exploded like a bomb in the Iranian media was the passing of a law allowing women to enter sport arenas by the Security Council. This created a wave of bewilderment among critics of the administration and hard-core religious conservatives. The news was, however, quickly mitigated; President Hassan Rouhani’s vice president for women and family affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi, said, “It’s not as if women are supposed to go see swimming or wrestling competitions." Molaverdi was essentially saying that while Iran was considering a law to allow women to enter sporting arenas, it would not be applied to all sporting events.

The view of the traditionalist clerics on women even watching sporting events on TV is quite varied. At one point, the leader of Iran said: “Watching wrestling and other sports by ladies, if not meant as a way of seeking pleasure, is not a problem.” There are, however, certain strict religious authorities that hold that even watching a soccer game on TV, because of the shorts worn by the players, might be a problem.

It is a fact that after the 1979 Revolution, the Islamization wave that spread through the country created a gap between women and sports. Women’s sports greatly declined and women were left out of sporting arenas as spectators as well. For years, women could only watch soccer matches through the 14-inch windows of 1980s black-and-white television sets.

Conservative religious authorities in various Islamic countries hold, more or less, similar views toward women’s sports and the presence of female athletes in the arenas. How much their views manage to become a reality is commonly proportional to their position in power, however.