Women’s (non)participation in sports: Gendered attitudes, biopolitics, and perceptions of body and sports in Iran

Women’s lower participation in male-dominated sports in Iran is perceived to be caused by religious and cultural forces. This article uses feminist scholarship to investigate whether belief in Islam plays a central role in forming women’s perceptions of sports participation and gender. Based on interviews with twenty-six women participants, the study reveals that most women used essentialist arguments that attributed muscularity, strength, and excessive size to men, and delicateness, beauty, and thinness to women. Drawing on feminist perspectives on body politics and discipline, women’s attitudes and explanations for (non)participation in sports are discussed. Discourses of appropriate sexuality, femininity, and moral gendered embodiment played roles in these explanations. Direct references by the participants to modesty and gender norms and Islamic teachings show that the influences of religious beliefs and prescriptions remained present but peripheral in explanations of gendered aspects of physical activity and sports participation.