This research, as part of my PhD dissertation, explores the ways masculinity and femininity are defined and/or contested in sports spaces and discourses, particularly in relation to women athletes’ physicality and sexuality, in Iran. I examine the ways in which women comply with or negotiate traditional and hegemonic patriarchal norms within sports spaces. I ask if participation in sports can and does empower women athletes within existing sexist structures of sports in Iran. Among many other scholars, I benefit from Sandra Lee Bartky’s conceptualization of “disciplinary practices” in producing a body which in gesture and appearance is recognizably feminine. I also draw on Debra Shogan’s examination of ways of resistance in sports fields. My research methodology was both participatory and emancipatory through years (2013-2023) of close engagement with women’s sports as a researcher, advocate, and commentator along with many other women’s sports advocators and athletes. Through the years of this research, I performed fieldwork research by attending various international sports competitions where Iranian athletes and fans were present. I also used media and social media as a source of a part of my data gathering. In my conversations with athletes, I gathered their stories of their positionality by practicing Afsaneh Najmabadi’s fieldwork methodology of using individual’s self-narratives as means of crafting their stories (2014). My findings show that in in the dominant view of the Iranian sphere of sports physical characteristics have a limited and predetermined relationship with personality and behavioral characteristics. In this view, elegance is necessary for femininity and strength is necessary for masculinity. I also found that the desirable characteristics attributed to ideal femininity or masculinity and their association with the specific physical characteristics of a woman, or a man led to the division of sports into feminine and masculine. Iranian women who enter male-dominated sports negotiate and challenge not only the gender borders in sports, but also the underlying social values and beliefs that are tied to each side of the border. I find the role of hijab significant and beyond just religious covering in this context. Hijab in this structure is a symbol of the need to protect women. Women athletes, like Elnaz Rekabi’s rock climbing without hijab, practice various ways of resistance against the hegemonic patriarchal boundaries and they exchange their physical capital and fame and status, in Bourdieu’s term.