Desegregation in Iran (just a bit)

For the first time since 1979, women in Iran are allowed to attend a men’s game in a stadium with a mixed crowd.

For nearly 40 years, half of Iran’s population was not allowed to go to a stadium to watch soccer, the country’s single most popular sport. The defacto ban, instilled by religious clerics after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, had prevented women from attending a majority of men’s sporting events, and women who challenged it risked arrest and imprisonment. But the long-standing segregation policy loosened during the 2018 World Cup, when thousands of women poured into Azadi Stadium, Tehran’s largest sports stadium, to watch live broadcasts of their national team playing in the group stage.

The deadening hand of organised religion. It’s all about power and control.