The Renewed Presence of Women in Stadiums: Online Campaign or Efforts on the Ground?

"Iranian women must be able to return to stadiums!" This is the demand of a number of Iranian sports-loving women and advocates for gender equality. Recently, an online campaign called "Twitter Storm" was launched on the social media platform Twitter with this goal in mind. This initiative led several Twitter users to join the call of the organizers, sharing the demand for women's presence in stadiums to watch matches with others, including Iranian government officials. This online campaign is the latest reaction to the ban on women's presence as spectators at sporting events in Iran, which has expanded from football to volleyball in recent years under the Islamic Republic's rule. Meanwhile, some advocates for gender equality are concerned that such actions may lead to a false sense of victory in the Twitter and internet battle, replacing real efforts by women in families and the streets of Iran to attend stadiums. In this week's program, views from an organizer of the campaign known as "Twitter Storm," a critic, and a researcher on internet access in Iran will be discussed. Soodeh Rad, a gender equality activist and co-founder of the Macholand website, is one of the organizers of the Twitter Storm in Paris; Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, director of the internet television Women TV and co-founder of the first campaign defending women's right to enter stadiums in Iran, is now in New York; and Amir Rashidi, a researcher on censorship and internet access in Iran, is also based in New York. Soodeh Rad: What results have you seen from this recent storm? Soodeh Rad: The Twitter Storm held to protest the ban on women's presence in stadiums lasted for a specific period, usually between one to three hours, during which virtual world users try to react to a specific issue. The results were exciting; we did not expect such a reception. More than 1,100 different users participated, and we had over 13,000 tweets in the very short time we had set for one hour. An important effect was that many thought women could now enter stadiums. The news from the early days announced by the government was still in that space, and they did not pay attention to the fact that the directive had not been issued yet. News in the following days unfortunately led to women ultimately being unable to enter stadiums, which got lost among daily news and other updates. One of our most important achievements is to remind once again that women's presence in stadiums is not a luxury request but a citizen's right, and this right has been taken from us for the third year now. What was the statement intended for the tweet? Soodeh Rad: For last week's tweet, we had twenty different statements in mind with various hashtags. A hashtag is a code that allows users to access all information associated with that hashtag in the virtual space when searched. One of the most important statements we emphasized was that we demand the free and safe presence of all women in stadiums, and this is a citizen's right for every human being. Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh: You are both an advocate for women's rights and, naturally, an advocate for women's presence in stadiums. When I invited you to participate in this roundtable, the first thing you said was that you generally do not have a favorable view of such activities. Let's start with this recent Twitter Storm. What criticism do you have of this collective action? Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh: My point is about the methods that women's movement activists should have for mobilizing the movement. Activities on social media should be engineered and simultaneously aligned with activities that occur in real conditions and spaces. For example, the issue of women's presence in stadiums, which I have been involved with for about seven or eight years or more, we went in front of the stadium during the 2005 presidential elections, we were beaten there, women went inside, and at that time, the discussion was about women's participation in football matches. Volleyball was not banned then. My point is that this is an old issue rooted in women's movement activities and has continued for these seven or eight years. But without strengthening the real conditions that exist as women activists and being able to internalize the necessity of women's presence in stadiums in the culture of society, we cannot launch serious movements or create significant changes with actions or methods in virtual networks. It is even harmful if there is no social ground and real activism for it. The harm is that individuals who feel protest or oppose the issue, without internalizing this topic and turning it into discourse, enter the layers and underlying areas of society and feel that they have done their activism with a click or by reposting and tweeting, and the entire sense of change, protest, and activism is discharged with a post without seeing any impact in the real space. Now, we will return to Ms. Rad to see what her opinion is on this criticism from you (Ms. Abbasgholizadeh). Mr. Rashidi, you have examined the results of this Twitter campaign. What conclusions did you reach? Amir Rashidi: In terms of the number of people who participated, the figure is not very significant. I mean to say that considering the extent of the Persian web, it is not large. However, in terms of the amount of messages published and the number of messages shared, it was one of the most successful online campaign activities. Why do I say the sharing was successful? Ms. Rad mentioned the number of tweets; 1,100 users participated. But from the day this storm was announced until the day it was conducted and ended, the number of posts published was around 13,000 or perhaps more than 13,000 posts. A significant percentage, around 64%, was reshared. Resharing means that someone who received the message had the desire to publish that message and spread it within their own network. The dissemination and publication of these messages among other users who did not participate were very high. We had perhaps over one million eight hundred thousand "reach," which shows that about one million eight hundred thousand people received these messages and heard this voice. In this regard, I can say it was a successful campaign. Unfortunately, because Twitter does not officially recognize the geography of Iran as a location, we saw that it did not trend. But if it recognized the geographical area of Iran, I believe this campaign could easily have trended and reached many more people with this message. Considering that in the past there have been criticisms of such online campaigns or internet campaigns, what weaknesses and strengths did this recent Twitter Storm have? Amir Rashidi: Its weakness was in introducing hashtags; many hashtags were introduced, which could have caused dispersion, and each user might have used one of these hashtags, and since we want to bring people to a common point, it might be a bit difficult. Its success was also in the numbers I mentioned. For example, consider previous campaigns that occurred within Iran; the online confrontations that occurred between government supporters or hardliners were significantly fewer than this number. Even the campaign that was launched for Mr. Khatami, which was "We are the media of Khatami," before the news of his sister's death was announced, which created an emotional wave, still had lower participation numbers. We should not look at how many people liked a Facebook page. We should look at how many people participate in that campaign. How many are willing to produce messages themselves? More importantly, how many are willing to share produced messages and transfer that message to their networks? In this regard, I think it was successful. That is, 64% resharing and a very significant percentage from within the country seems to me to be very successful. Amir Masoud Katouzian: The "We are the media of Khatami" campaign received ten thousand likes in the first day within ten hours and around forty thousand in the second week, if I am not mistaken. Ms. Rad, Ms. Abbasgholizadeh says that online campaigns like the Twitter Storm we talked about can give women a false sense of success and victory without engaging them in organization and activism. What is your response to her criticism? Soodeh Rad: Of course, this is a reality. We also know that with a post on Facebook or Twitter, nothing is going to change in a world that we call the real world in contrast to the virtual world. It may not have much impact, and one of the main reasons for this is that the rulers of the Islamic Republic and even famous individuals do not have an active presence in the virtual space. Our access to these individuals in the virtual space is less. However, regarding the specific Twitter Storm about women's presence in stadiums, this first storm and the second one were entirely coordinated with friends in Iran who want to distribute brochures, if they can hold a gathering, and in any case, they are also doing things inside Iran. The Twitter Storm does something that is much riskier in the real world. We must accept this reality that not everyone wants to put themselves in danger today. Perhaps these activities in the virtual world are for those who do not want to engage in civil activities with the repressive atmosphere currently prevailing in Iran. Ms. Abbasgholizadeh, Ms. Rad says that the Twitter Storm is low-cost and that there were also coordinations between outside and inside regarding this action. Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh: Yes, I am aware that perhaps the recent storm regarding women's presence in stadiums has come a step closer to linking actions that occur in the real space with those in the virtual space. Here another problem arises, which is that the sense of success you rightly pointed out from changes that pertain to social culture and elevate people's demands from the real community is transferred to the media and social networks. The problem we have had for years with the women's movement, and perhaps in other social movements as well, which causes the daily decline of these movements, is that their media presence is greater than what actually exists. And both the government and the cyber army and regressive groups that act as resistance groups and social activists all interact in a space outside the real community space, and for this reason, everything that exists happens at a political level, within that dominant political space. On one side, Ms. Molaverdi protests, and on the other side, Basij groups issue statements that they want to go there and do such things. On the other side, women's groups inside Iran are now starting virtual campaigns. But where is the presence of the people in the middle? It is absent. I want to say that overall, the virtual campaigns that are taking shape in the women's movement are heirs to campaigns we had decades ago with wrong policies. We gained the most from the media, from cameras coming to us and all the photos being published. I want to draw attention to this group that is organizing inside Iran to resist the ban on women's presence in stadiums. What are they doing? A group gathers together, distributes brochures, and goes in front of the stadium. Or they start taking pictures at a certain point. They also talk to people a bit because the repressive atmosphere is heavy. Not that I say they do not want to work. Then suddenly they transfer this from a social act to a political act, and then the cost goes up. That is, something emerges from it like Ghoncheh Ghavami. Ghoncheh Ghavami ends up in prison from it. Without us having gained anything real, we are moving backward every day. We are giving up positions one after another because we do not have popular support. Let me ask Ms. Rad for her opinion as well, as she answered very briefly this time. Then I will ask Mr. Rashidi for his opinion. Ms. Rad, what is your opinion on the fact that women's presence as a result of these types of campaigns in the media increases more than in the real community, and they consider this a shortcoming of this type of work? Soodeh Rad: The reality is that we are currently living in a world where the media does not cover all our daily affairs, and occasionally a topic larger than what we perceive as reality is presented. We must look at who the audience of this media is. If BBC, Radio Farda, and others talk about the absence of women in stadiums, how detrimental or beneficial is this for us? I completely agree with Ms. Abbasgholizadeh that the government uses this media exposure to turn the request for citizen rights into a political act and to hold individuals accountable for politicizing their civil rights. I believe here too, Ms. Abbasgholizadeh would completely agree with me that feminism and equality...