Iranian woman dresses up as a man to sneak into a football match
The unidentified woman wanted to see her favourite team play in a match
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Your support makes all the difference.An Iranian woman sneaked in to watch a football match by disguising herself as a man.
The 22-year-old woman wanted to see her favourite team, Persepolis FC, play in a match.
Filming herself anonymously, in case she suffered reprisals, she shared the footage on social media.
In one of the videos, she says: “Here is the stadium. I told you I’d come here.”
There is no official ban on women attending sports events in Iran, but they are often refused entry so it is rare for women to attend.
In a third video, the woman explains that she layered five T-shirts and five pairs of trousers to hide her figure and covered her face with face paint.
The videos provoked a mixed response on social media, with some users worrying she could be arrested for broadcasting her decision to sneak in.
But Faranak Amidi, a BBC Persian service reporter told the BBC that based on the Iranian constitution, women are not actually banned from entering stadiums.
“But there is an unofficial ban on women going to watch boxing, swimming and football matches,” she said.
“As a woman if you try to enter a stadium, you will immediately, right at the gates, be stopped”.
“Not many women even try to go and do that. Women who want to get into the stadiums, they dress as boys," she added.
In 2014 an Iranian-British woman named Ghoncheh Ghavami was jailed for five months in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for trying to attend a men’s volleyball game. She was later released on a £20,000 bail.
Amidi told the BBC Ghavami was threatened by people online who called for her to “be arrested, chained to the gates of the stadium burnt to death.”
She added: “But mostly they were very supportive of her. And men were also supporting her so it wasn’t really that hostile.”
Iran's current Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi, has publicly supported allowing women to attend sports matches.
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