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Women face several challenges in elite sports around the world. A few of these challenges are gender stereotypes, the combination of motherhood and elite sports, fewer resources and equipment, and the lack of opportunities for women to hold managerial positions (Bowes et al., 2022; Carson et al., 2018; Tjønndal, 2019). Women in elite sports in Islamic nations face broader limitations than those in non-Islamic nations (Sadeghi et al., 2018). Yet, in the last decade, Iranian women in elite sports have achieved significant success at the international level.
Despite the challenges in gathering information about the conditions of elite female sports in Iran, this qualitative study sought to obtain a realistic and unfiltered perspective of Iranian women's experiences in elite sports through an interpretive phenomenological approach. We selected female athletes, coaches, referees, and managers who had previously participated in Olympic, World, and Asian events through purposive sampling for unstructured, in-depth interviews. Four main themes emerged from the analysis of Iranian participants' lived experiences of elite female sports. These included barriers, challenges, and changes in Iranian society, gender discrimination in Iranian sports organizations, Islamic and Iranian cultural aspects, and inspirational motivations. This research revealed women's perceptions and experiences of elite sports in Iran, as well as their life-world and what it means to them. These concepts have been experienced to varying degrees by elite women in both their personal and professional lives. The elite women in Iran's sport are like super-heroes who are fighting on two fronts at once.
