Guinness has announced its plans to tackle the lack of visibility for women’s sport and specifically representation of women in rugby, pledging to “#NeverSettle until everyone belongs in sport.”

Ahead of the Women’s Six Nations Finals Weekend, which takes place on Saturday 24th April, GUINNESS has partnered with Wikimedia to ensure that every member of the competing squads across Ireland and the UK is properly recorded on the site viewed by 18 billion globally every month – adding over 135,000 words to their profiles.

Just 18 per cent of biographies on Wikipedia are of women, but this gap widens further in sport where just 3 per cent of 14,916 rugby-related biographies are of female players and the current Guinness Six Nations men’s squads have 392 per cent more words devoted to them than their female counterparts.

In Ireland, just 17 per cent of the current Women’s Six Nations squad have a presence on Wikipedia, and for those that do, none of the profiles includes an image of the player.

International team pages see a stark disparity also, with the current male rugby squad receiving more than 6,000 words on their page, whereas the women’s team have just over 1,500.

We carried the story last week of the Guinness Advertising in the Irish Independent on the opening Saturday of the Women’s Six Nations and the corresponding lift in coverage which that paper gave over other broadsheets.

We feel there is some improvement being seen on the 6 per cent coverage figure that Guinness is using with our March review showing an average across a selection of Irish media of 9.2 per cent but that is still misrepresentation of the number of women playing and engaging with sport and it is an area that we will continue to cover in detail.

The shortage of data and information on women’s players needs to be tackled so that the disparity in representation within the sporting community can be closed.

Guinness has invited Wikipedia editors, women’s rugby fans, writers and journalists to take part in the campaign, adding to the stories of past and present personalities.

We will answer that call and add to a number of stories as we can over the coming weeks.

Guinness is also working with players on a global scale to update their Twitter profiles, ensuring they are in line with the new verification standards. Not only will this provide female players with the same platform to build connections with their fans, the media and the sporting community that their male colleagues have, but will work to improve and increase conversation about the players and the sport globally.

In the last twelve months, out of the 307,541 tweets mentioning rugby or the Six Nations globally, only 10 per cent of those were about the women’s sport.

“Visibility is a significant barrier when it comes to ensuring sport is a place where everyone can belong,” said Alan McAleenan, Guinness Marketing Director for Ireland.

“It’s hard to be what you can’t see, so a critical step towards driving equity for women’s rugby players is giving them a platform to spotlight who they are – this step will make getting to know the players easier than ever by partnering with Wikimedia to tell their stories.”

“Through our partnership and the other dedicated activity across the Women’s Six Nations fixtures, we will be helping to drive the visibility of the game and its players, attracting new fans and enabling everyone to get to know the Ireland squad a little better.”

It’s a campaign that we are naturally supporting of and will contribute to as well as follow closely.

 

Sport for Business Partners