This Iranian Athlete Won The Boxing Match, But Lost to Patriarchy
How do you welcome an international boxing champion? Iran does it with an arrest warrant.
How do you celebrate an athlete who just won an international championship for the country?
Give them a medal? Declare a holiday in their honour?
Well, if you are in Iran, it really depends on the gender of the athlete and what clothes they wear.
Iranian boxer Sadar Khadem created history when she beat France’s Anne Chauvin in an international boxing match. She is the Iranian woman to have achieved and what did she get in return?
An arrest warrant!
Yes, Sadaf was issued an arrest warrant by her government for not wearing the hijab during the match.
If that was not all, she is current a refugee and is stuck in France unable to return to her family thanks to a law in Iran that dictates how women must dress in public.
To make matters worse, iran’s national boxing federation too has refused to back her up. “In the view of the federation all of her activities are a private act,” said Hossein Soori, the head of the federation as idiva.com reports.
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