The image above is a representation of male and female coverage in sports news. Light blue represents male coverage. Dark blue represents female coverage. Here is another:
…and here is a third:
It’s common to see an increase in news coverage about women on International Women’s Day. Usually, however, by the following day, things have gone back to how they were before – men dominating the news coverage. Havas Lisbon and a women’s sports group, Raparigas da Bola (English translation: Ball Girls), want this inequality to end.
To highlight the inequality of exposure given by the top three, tier-one sports newspapers to female athletes, they came up with an action launched one day after International Women’s Day. In the initiative, #WomenAlsoPlay, the partners produced an exact representation of each of the three newspapers published on March 9 as two-tone infographics, highlighting the inequality of coverage by colour coding every column based on gender coverage: one colour for men and one for women, to illustrate how biased media coverage is towards male athletes.
Early on the morning of 9th, the newspapers, fresh off the press, were digitalised, every column inch colour-coded by gender, printed and then delivered to journalists, influencers, and athletes so they were able to share it with their fans and followers.
All the newspapers’ logos were covered with a sticker using the campaign’s hashtag, #WomenAlsoPlay. The sticker also mentions Raparigas da Bola’s key message, Don’t leave women athletes on the sidelines.
Credits:
Agency: Havas Lisbon
Executive Creative Director: Paulo Pinto
Creative Director: José Vieira
Digital Creative Director: Margarida Pedreira
Copywriter: Bernardo Tavares
Art Director: Alex Meneses
Account Director: Sérgio Resende
Account Management: Marta Costa
Graphic Production Director: António Fernandes
Graphic Artist: Nuno Nascimento
Media: Ana Torres
Client: Raparigas da Bola
Client Team: Marta Faria
Production Company: Garage Films
Director: David Infante
Executive Producer: Miguel Varela
Producers: Beatriz Pereira & Patricia Tavares
Editor: Miguel Monteiro
Assistant Director: Júlio Paixão
Assistants: João Bettencourt & Miguel Monteiro
