Project Title
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Project Title
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Project Title
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Empowerment & inclusion of women + gender minorities in sports
The Sporting Spirit: Children’s Sports Magazine
Since its origin, sports has always been associated with physical strength and endurance which are largely seen as “masculine” traits.Thus, women and gender minorities are believed to be weaker and have been systematically discriminated and marginalised in this field that has led to the extensive disparity that exists today.
Influential, international sporting competitions like the Olympics, FIFA and Wimbledon have been built on gender binaries and they reflect our society which has always favoured cis-gendered, white men; who (not coincidentally) are in a position of power to make the rules. This has greatly affected the inclusion of women and gender minorities, such non-binary and trans athletes.
An individual’s gender shouldn’t be an obstacle for an equal opportunity to take part in a sport. Sports has many physical and mental health advantages that affect an individual’s well-being, especially for growing children. In addition, engaging in sports can also be used as a powerful tool to empower and build confidence.
DURATION
4 months
Sep - Dec 2021
ROLE
Undergraduate Thesis
Personal Project
INDUSTRY
Gender & Sports
By questioning the status-quo, understanding and breaking down the barriers, being aware of the existing intersections and actively championing for equality, the future of sports can be inclusive and truly imbibe the spirit of sportspersonship.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
What intervention strategy can effectively raise awareness about gender discrimination in sports, thereby increasing future participation rates among women and gender minorities?
01
Secondary Research
Read article and papers that look at the institution of sports through an intersectional feminist lens, as well as books such as ‘Beyond the Private World: Indian Women in the Public Sphere’ and ‘The Unauthorised Biography of T’. Saw interviews and talks by professional athletes that are women and from gender minorities.
02
Primary Research
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Conducted a survey to understand the institution of sports in India. Analysed this data through detailed data visualisation.
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Interviews and co-building workshops with target audience
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Interviews with school coaches and professional sportspersons (women or from gender minorities)
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Visits to parks, fields, turfs and other such sports areas to make on-site observations.
03
Affinity Mapping
Grouping all the research, data points and insights under larger headings to understand the main issues, which eventually help inform my outcome.
04
Insights Picker
Sorting the headings/overarching concepts into four sections, using the ‘Insight Picker’ technique. This divides insights into 4 sections using different combinations of obvious, relevant, irrelevant and unknown to understand which insights should be focused on i.e. unknown & relevant.
05
User Research
To have a better understanding of my target audience, I have used Empathy mapping & User personas. These were based on my earlier research.
06
Ideation
Used brain-dumps, SCAMPER and mind-maps to come up with a variety of interventions. Eventually, I have narrowed it down to the one which is most likely to be effective and created concept sketches of every page, as per my research.
07
User Testing
Testing out the rough ideas & sketches with my target audience to see if it works.
08
Branding & Visual Language
Creating the final book which collates and translates all these learnings into a fun, quirky magazine.
Methodology
Secondary Research
These are the different themes I came across while researching on gender within the institution of sport. There is a lot of information available on this topic and it is crucial to see how intersections of identity play into your experience as a sports-person.
Reoccurring themes included ‘Gender Verification’ tests, participation of trans-athletes, Female- Athlete Paradox, the binary nature of sports, male-to-female participation ratios and women’s sports in the media. I also looked more closely within the Indian context, primarily, caste and gender-bias in Cricket.
Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography by Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis Breaking down harmful and gender-biased connotations and myths surrounding Testosterone, with one chapter specifically dedicated to Athletic Ability.
Beyond the Private World: Indian Women in the Public Sphere, edited by Subrata Bagchi
This gave deeper insights into the Indian context and how the systematic oppression of women to remain in private spaces, affected the Indian sports sphere today. It also analysed the movie ‘Bend it like Beckham’ through an Indian lens.
Selecting the target audience
11-14 years old, Urban School-going children with access to internet, all genders
This is the optimum age to create awareness, as females start dropping out of sports, almost at twice the rate as males by the time they’re 14 years old. By educating all genders about the history and current scenario, the future can be better and more inclusive for women and gender minorities. Perhaps, in a more optimistic setting, this could be sowing the seeds to re-imagine the binary system of sports.
Primary Research
I started with a survey that aimed to -
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Collect information on people’s current perceptions of sports and gender, this includes people of all ages.
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Collect data on relations between their gender, a sport they play, whether they still play a sport and watching LIVE sports (women vs men)
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Understand my target audience more closely and know more about their daily interactions with information
Based on my survey data, I colour coded the insights as shown below and mapped them out according to the three age groups; 11-14, 15-50 and 50+ (not included below, as there were only 3 responses). This helped me easily notice patterns and make connections.
Affinity Mapping
I grouped and linked all the insights I got from the survey, interviews and data mapping.There were lot of similar opinions such as - things girls have been told as sportswomen, how coaches play a role in their sports journey, media and gender-bias in professional leagues.
Insight Picker
I sorted all the headings and overarching concepts into four sections, as shown below. I will largely focus on the insights from the ‘Unknown-Relevant’ section because these insights are significant for my context but there is a lack of awareness for the same. I will still be including themes from the ‘Obvious-Relevant’ section.
User Research
I was only able to map for only two genders, girl and boy, since I didn’t have enough primary research and information on gender minorities. I used my insights to fill this map as well as the user personas. It was interesting to see the ways in which sexism affected the boy as well.
Reflections & Learnings
One challenge I faced during the course of this project was the inclusion of information and experiences of gender minorities - it was an important point that kept coming up in my research, since sports is very binary. However, I didn’t have enough access to collect primary research for that. To navigate that, I added a quote from a trans-man who had responded but otherwise stuck to explaining the foundational terms such as ‘sexuality’, ‘non- binary, ‘transgender’, ‘gender dysphoria’, etc.
In addition, trying to ask questions and dismantle a system that is widely accepted and used isn’t easy. During the project, conversations I’ve had with my friends/family/faculty have been met with resistance. I hope that I was able to clearly and sensitively put my point across without any biases forming beforehand that cloud their understanding of the current system’s flaws.
I also saw a lot of potential for this intervention in rural areas. But once again, due the lack of accessibility and time restraints, I had to focus on urban children.
I would like to end this documentation by mentioning that I enjoyed the process especially because of how passionate I am about this theme.
Many girls aged 11-14 years, choose to continue to play sports because of their friends. This might suggest that having other girls around leads to a more comforting environment.
Only boys (aged 11-14) continue to play because they want to become professionals
Cricket, from 11-50 years of ages, is completely male-dominated.
Almost all the people who state ‘no time’ as a reason they stopped playing, are women and other genders.
Most people who still continue to play, mostly men, are also the ones who believe they are good at a particular sport.
More women, than men, have chosen ‘Body changes’,‘No space’ and ‘Academics’ as reasons they have stopped playing a sport and only women have chosen ‘Covid-19 pandemic’ as a reason they stopped playing, suggesting a dependence on institutions for their sports.
Frisbee is dominated by men
Most people who play sports to meet new people, still continue play.
Almost all men who stopped playing cited ‘academics’ and ‘not feeling good enough’ as a reason.
EMPATHY MAPPING
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Girl
Boy
USER PERSONAS
Ideation
This was a mind-map of all and any possible outcome. Based on the research, certain factors became essential to keep in mind while thinking of a final output as below.
Irrespective of age/gender, almost everyone agrees that sports is fun.
01
Almost all children play a sport.
02
A lot of people stopped playing by 9th grade or in Undergraduate college.
03
There is almost no gap in children, aged 11-14 years, choosing to continue sports because they are ‘good at it’. However, in the 15-50 age group, the disparity/gap increases considerably. This suggests social factors could play a role in whether girls continue to play sports.
04
The ‘reasons you stopped playing’ section is dominated by cool colours, suggesting that more women stopped playing in comparison to men.
05
Football, Basketball and Badminton are slightly more dominated by men whereas Running and Table-tennis are almost equal.
06
Other Insights
5 COACH INTERVIEWS
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3 PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES INTERVIEWS
3 CHILDREN AGED 11-14
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The children I interviewed were aged 12, 13 and 14; to my surprise, they were quick to grasp information and were already aware of terms, like discrimination and feminism, that I expected to explain.
I conducted an activity to understand my target audience’s unconscious biases and perceptions of ‘masculine/feminine’ sports. I asked them to categorise sports into masculine, feminine and gender-neutral and the reason for the choice.
I noted that the boy happened to put sports in the ‘masculine’ space and gender-neutral space and only one in the ‘feminine’ space whereas the girl’s was almost equally divided amongst the three categories. Both of them stated Hockey as gender-neutral only because of its significant presence in the Indian context and the recent Olympics.
COVER SKETCHES
User Testing
I showed the initial sketches of the cover to few children from my target audience - below is the feedback they have given and how I updated my design to incorporate it.
Feedback: Looks instructional because of straight lines and outline illustrations
Update: More curves and solid fill illustrations
Feedback: “We like minimalism”
Update: More negative space and spaced out illustrationsMore negative space and spaced out illustrations
Feedback: “I’d like to see different kind of sports”
Update: Added different bits and pieces from all sports
Regarding a completed page
“The message is very strongly put out and it’s very easy to read and understand. It’s not like those other things that use flowery language and stuff to overcomplicate and effectively lose the message. It’s to the point, factual data in understandable words..”
Branding & Visual Language
I went for a child-friendly, trendy and fun style. It’s all about simplicity and delight while explaining complex concepts to young ones. I created a logo, chose fonts & colours, decided on a name and overall illustration style.
The donut graphs were created to resemble the Olympics logo
I manually recorded football jersey colours of the men’s and women’s FIFA qualifier teams and mapped it using proportions and percentages
I manually went through Sports Illustrated’s archive and documented the gender of people on their cover for the last decade, then I created a graph on a software and illustrated books on top of that
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An information base which can be regularly updated, so the information is not outdated.
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Stories or metaphors that break down big concepts into easy-to-understand bits for my target audience’s age group.
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Real time news interspersed with inspiring stories of women who are playing professionally because as per my research, visibility is an important tool of empowerment.
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Explaining gender based disparities through empathy so as not to create biases or an aversion for sports, but rather inclusive environment.
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Creating a safe, inclusive space for sharing information and data.
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A combination of an offline and a digital space so that it can be accessed from multiple modes
This digital comic would have multiple stories of barriers women face but all end with real life examples of how sportswomen overcame them. This can be a source of inspiration and empowerment because as per my insights, visibility in media is transformative. There could be audio clippings from commentaries or videos from matches, hyperlinks connecting to other resources or interactive info graphics.
Digital Comic
This is a journal that would assist children to be empowered and confident in their sports journey while also conveying relevant information. This could have exercises for mindfulness as well as fun activities, there could be journaling spaces and information tidbits, and also instructions for physical games.
It could be something children carry around with them, something small that you can do whenever you have free time.
Activity Book
As per research, lot of children spend their screen-time doing academic work so having a physical output to explore in their free time would be preferable and engaging.
This children’s magazine would consist
of activities, information, stories and resources. Even real world information, stories and news can be a part of it — which can either be inspiring or explaining gender-biases, to be aware of them and recognise them in the future. There could be a QR code to an online repository of all the issues which could have a platform to connect aspiring sportswomen.
Quarterly Magazine
3 POSSIBLE IDEAS
CONTENT & WHY
Here is the content the magazine would have page by page. Each page is curated with a reasoning based on the research and process beforehand.
Impact & Future
In the future, I aim to expand this project by engaging & researching with a larger and more diverse pool of of testers, specifically athletes who identify as gender minorities. I would love to collaborate with other artists, writers, and creatives to enrich the magazine's content.
Additionally, I plan to develop the digital aspect of this project, including a website, an online repository and a safe platform for aspiring athletes to connect.