Women In Sports: Iranian Volleyball Tournament Finally Allows Female Spectators For First Time

Iranian authorities said Wednesday they will allow female spectators to attend the Kish Island volleyball tournament for the first time after organizers threatened to move the event to another country if women were barred from entering the stadium. Female spectators will be permitted to watch male competitors at the four-day-international beach volleyball tournament between Wednesday and Saturday on the island in the Persian Gulf off southern Iran, the Associated Press reported.

Women were barred from attending volleyball tournaments since 2012 when the longtime ban on females going to soccer matches was extended to volleyball. Iran prevented women from going to soccer matches in 1982, three years after the 1978 revolution, which is also referred to as the Islamic Revolution. A new constitution emerged from that uprising creating an Islamic Republic where strict dress codes were implemented to promote a traditional interpretation of the religion. Because some sports involved players wearing outfits exposing a great deal of skin, some conservative Muslims considered it inappropriate for women to watch, Hassan Fereshtian, an Iranian cleric, told BBC News.

Iranian authorities attributed the ban to the Islamic theory that women shouldn't hear males swear and curse in public. Women were not permitted to attend the first Kish Island Open in February 2016, prompting social justice groups like the Human Rights Groups to threaten to halt this year's event in protest.

The Human Rights Watch launched a campaign called #Watch4Women after British-Iranian student Ghoncheh Ghavami was detained in 2014 for trying to attend a men's volleyball match in Iran. Ghavami was charged with "propaganda against the state" and jailed for more than 100 days, much of it in solitary confinement.

#Watch4Women called for the International Federation of Volleyball to exclude Iran from hosting volleyball tournaments until it lifted its gender-discriminating ban. And the Switzerland-based International Federation of Volleyball responded by putting a tremendous pressure on the Iranian government to lift it, citing how it violated principle four of the FIVB constitution, which prohibited discrimination.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Iran's volleyball ban “ridiculous” in 2015, saying that nations that are part of international organizations like the FIVB should respect women’s rights.

Minky Worden, a director at the Human Rights Watch, called the decision “a positive, if small, step in the right direction” for the Islamic Republic.

“It shows that sports federations like the FIVB have the power to enforce the basic requirement that all countries have to play by the rules and that they don’t get a pass on discriminating against and excluding women,” Worden said.