Iranian bike-sharing app sparks outrage after refusing women service

An Iranian bike-sharing firm has provoked fury after customers noticed it was not offering services to women and they were unable to register on its app.

There have been reports Bdood, based in the capital of Tehran, had faced pressure from the police and prosecutor-general’s office to stop offering services to women or be in danger of having to shut.

The Centre for Human Rights in Iran, a New-York based organisation that documents rights violations in the country, tweeted: “The Tehran prosecutor has forced Iran bike-sharing company Bdood to block women from using their bikes.

“This screenshot shows women being rejected when they declare their gender on the app. Religious officials say women riding bikes in pubic is 'sinful', but many do anyway.”

One user warned others on Twitter about the saga – claiming the bike-sharing company had been “banned” from offering its services to women.

“If the story is true, I’m never going to use Bdood again,” another critic said.

While there are no laws which forbid women from riding bicycles in public, prominent hard-line clerics in the country have ruled it is “provocative” and consequently goes against Sharia law.

The prosecutor in Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city which is known as the city of bicycles due to its many cycling lanes, announced women had been banned from cycling in public in May.

Ali Esfahani argued it was “haram” and prohibited under Islam and ordered the police to issue warnings to women riding bicycles in public and seize their ID cards.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa in 2016 explicitly barring women from cycling in public but it was not strictly enforced.

Women’s rights are stringently restricted in Iran. Iranian women have been barred from watching stadium football matches for most of the 40 years since the Islamic Revolution.

The clerical regime has been reported to have hired security forces since August last year to deal with women who attempt to sneak into the stadium with men’s make-up.

Wearing the Islamic headscarf is compulsory in public for all women in the country – with those who do not wear a hijab, or are seen to be wearing a “bad hijab” by allowing some of their hair to show, facing punishments ranging from fines to imprisonment.

Amnesty International says women and girls are regularly stopped in the street by morality police and vigilantes. The human rights organisation estimates at least 39 women were arrested last year in connection with anti-hijab protests.

Last year, an Iranian woman was sentenced to two years in prison and 18 years of probation for removing her headscarf in a protest.

Shaparak Shajarizadeh said she had been sentenced for “opposing the compulsory hijab” and “waving a white flag of peace in the street”.

There has been mounting resistance to the enforced hijab over recent years in Iran – with some women shaving their hair and dressing as men.