Gender stereotypes and women's inactivity in Iran

November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a day to remember the violence women face because of their gender. Women's rights activist Banafsheh Jamali looks at one of the most underreported forms of violence against women in Iran.

According to statistics, one in three women will experience some form of violence in her lifetime, a shocking figure that has prompted many countries to enact strict protective laws to reduce violence against women.

In Iran, however, the situation is different. The laws in Iran not only do not protect women from the gender-based violence they face in the home, workplace, or other public places, but in many cases they themselves promote violence against women. Women in Iran face structural and systematic violence from their very childhood. Violence that deprives them of access to their most basic human needs from their very childhood.

That's it ! Girls don't run .

High walls, so high that when they raise their heads, with their small bodies, there is no sign of the clear blue sky they saw in storybooks, they only see walls and that's it. Walls with iron guards that are supposed to prevent any unauthorized person from looking at them. The little girls are playing in the small school yard, and in the middle of their childish games, they hear the school principal's voice over the loudspeaker, calling out to one of them in a harsh and commanding tone every now and then: Maryam, fix your veil, Romina, button up your robe, Zahra, put your hair under your veil.

Our childhood memories as women are full of bitter and sometimes disturbing memories of what we faced in girls' schools. Girls who have faced and continue to face double and structural violence in Iran due to their gender. Girls who, from childhood, in the Iranian education system and in those small courtyards with high walls, learn to be inactive and immobile.

Inactivity is more common in girls than boys.

A study conducted by the World Health Organization on 1.6 million people from 146 countries shows that physical inactivity among adolescents is a global concern. According to the report, more than 80 percent of adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17 do not meet the World Health Organization recommendation of at least one hour of physical activity per day. According to the report, physical inactivity was seen more in girls than in boys. According to the organization, the inactivity rate of girls in this study was 85 percent and that of boys was 78 percent. In many countries, girls after the age of ten are less inclined to do physical activity than in previous years. Some reports have stated that the decline in physical activity of girls during adolescence is up to 83 percent.

Many gender experts attribute this shift in behavior to gender roles and expected behaviors for each gender. In fact, teenage girls may view some sports as masculine sports more than younger girls. Despite all the efforts to change the gendered view of sports in today's world, sports are still not considered a feminine activity in many beliefs and cultures, and many girls learn this pattern of behavior and gender stereotypes from childhood and enter adulthood thinking that sports are a male domain.

Gender stereotypes about sports are most evident in countries like Iran, where women face structural restrictions. Girls who, from the moment they enter school, are virtually denied the opportunity to move and be physically active due to the mandatory hijab, veils, long, loose-fitting robes, and confinement to enclosed spaces.

Women's low participation in the public sphere

In Iran, many sports that require women to be in public, such as cycling, are banned for women. The ban on cycling for women in Iran is so strict that even girls cannot ride bicycles to school. This is common in many countries and encourages students who spend long periods of time sitting motionless in classrooms to get moving.

Mohammad Taqi Naqdali, a representative from Khomeini Shahr in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, called on those opposed to women's cycling to consider it illegal and forbidden in public spaces to make this activity a reasonable thing by moving women's cycling to indoor places such as women-only parks.

These bans and restrictions on sports environments have caused significant physical and psychological harm to women and girls. According to the deputy social director of the Iranian Welfare Organization, in the past 15 years, girls' vital capacities and health have decreased by 11 percent due to lack of space and mobility.

Child abuse, which by limiting girls' sports spaces to small, enclosed environments, has practically deprived them of the opportunity to grow, their physical and mental health from their very childhood. Girls who are taught not to exercise and to be inactive during school, a lifestyle that carries over into their adulthood. According to statistics announced by Afshin Molaei, the head of the Federation of Public Sports, the number of women who are inactive and not exercising in Iran has reached an alarming 64 percent. Molaei calls this number worrying and says: "If we cannot implement and implement public sports among women and girls in the country within a four-year period, in the next decade we will only face a population of sick women."

Research shows that helping girls build active lives during adolescence helps them continue this trend into adulthood. Inactive girls will become inactive women in the future who suffer from serious diseases. Inactivity in girls causes hormonal disorders and leads to osteoporosis and decreased muscle strength. Menstrual disorders have also been reported as other complications of inactivity in girls. High blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and cervical cancer are other diseases that people who are inactive during childhood will face in adulthood.

Women 's mobility poverty in Iran reaches primary school age

Dr. Farzaneh Torkan, a physical medicine specialist and founder of the first sports medical institution called the Tehran Sports Medical Board, referring to a study conducted on girls' sports, says: "In the case of Iranian women, we are faced with a problem in which 60 percent of our women face motor poverty from the age of pre-adolescence; that is, motor poverty has begun in our women from elementary school age. This situation continues and continues into youth and middle age, leading to diseases that must be treated and paid for."

According to this medical expert and based on research, the age of puberty for girls in Iran has dropped significantly and has reached the age of primary school, i.e. 9 or 10. According to the aforementioned research, the age of puberty in girls who exercised is higher than the age of puberty in girls who did not exercise.

Despite all the warnings that health experts have made about the consequences of inactivity among women and girls in Iran, these warnings do not seem to have led to a change in the Iranian government's policies regarding women's sports. Based on the government's view that women should stay at home, most sports clubs in Iran have allocated their morning and afternoon shifts to women, and the evening and night hours that working women and teenage schoolgirls can attend are actually allocated to men. This exclusion of women and girls from the public sphere is an approach that the Iranian government has been pursuing for years through its macro and micro policies. Policies that teach girls from their earliest childhood that sports in Iran is a male domain, with a small share of it reserved for them, especially in some large cities and for a specific class.

Source: DW