Iranian Racer a Champion for Women, Too
Laleh Seddigh Pushes Boundaries On and Off Track
While doing a little research on female racecar drivers, I came across a few articles about a woman named Laleh Seddigh. Read any of these articles, and your idea of the “hostile” environs that female racecar drivers face in the U.S. will be turned on its head. You see, Ms. Seddigh races cars in Iran. And she wins, too.
Besides her talent and hard work ethic, what stood out most to me were the obstacles that she and others like her have to overcome. Simply being allowed to drive is an obstacle, but another is the fact that if she wins a race, television coverage won’t show her standing on a podium above a man. Oh, and she can’t stand on that podium without a coat and headscarf over her fire suit. She has to get permission from the Iranian racing authority to race in other countries, which can be daunting, and she was recently banned from racing following allegations of engine tampering.
Keep reading about Laleh Seddigh and you’ll delve into some deep cultural dissertations on women in Iran. I don’t want to go into that too much; I know there are issues at play there that I can’t relate to or understand. What I do know, however, is that Ms. Seddigh and others like her are incredibly inspiring.
In an interview with The New York Times in 2005, Ms. Seddigh said she wasn’t a feminist; she just wanted to drive and compete. “I like competition in everything,” she was quoted as saying. “I have to move whatever is movable in the world.” It seems that as she’s gotten more experienced in driving, she’s also grown more into a role as a champion of women’s rights in Iranian motorsports.
Click on the links below to learn more about Laleh Seddigh and other Iranian female racecar drivers.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,529173,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/mar/04/motorracing.features
http://www.mentalmayhem.net/newswire/2008/02/iran-bans-laleh.html
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