The Female Field

OOH - Dubai, UAE

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Many young Arab girls grow up believing that sports are not for them. This stems from the notion in traditional Middle Eastern society that sports are more suitable for boys and men. Sadly, this mindset has led to a startling statistic: an average of 73 per cent of young Arab girls give up playing sports by the age of 14.

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To challenge this misconception and raise awareness about the transformative impact of sports on women and girls, together with adidas, we created the world’s first ‘Female Field’. The concept stems from the insight that in the Arabic language, most words associated with sports are female in gender. For instance, words like ball, run, kick, jump, goal, shoot, pass, and even the word sport itself are all considered female due to the ending letter, called the Ta’Marbuta.

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Drawing inspiration from this linguistic feature, we incorporated the “Ta’Marbuta” into the design of a football pitch. Just as this letter gives gender to words, it gave gender to the pitch, making it distinctly female.