Iranian women to attend football stadium for the first time in 40 years

(Patria) – Women in Iran will be able to enter a football stadium for the first time in 40 years after FIFA threatened to suspend Iran over a discriminatory ban.

This decision by the world football governing body was prompted by the recent suicide of a young Iranian woman who set herself on fire fearing a prison sentence for attending a match disguised as a man.

Shortly after the strict law was changed, Iranian women, who are avid football fans, obtained tickets for the match between the national team and Cambodia, which will be played at the Azadi Stadium in Tehran.

'I still don't believe it will happen because after all these years of working in this field, watching (sports) only on television, now I can experience it,' says sports journalist Raha Poorbakhsh, one of the 3,500 women who bought a ticket for the match.

The recent ban on women attending matches was not a written rule or law, but it had been practically enforced since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Last October, about a hundred Iranian women entered the Azadi Stadium where Iran played a friendly match against Bolivia. The day after, a warning came from the chief prosecutor that this 'will not happen again' because it 'leads to sin,' writes the British Guardian.