Launched in April this year, 'Keeping Score' is a social media campaign led by 'Soccer Girl Goals' to raise the topic of discrimination and gender inequality in sport
File photo: SportPlus.SG
Launched in April 2021, Keeping Score is one of Singapore's first anti-discrimination campaign for women in sport, which looks to equip them with the necessary knowledge and confidence to speak up and stand up to discrimination against women in sport.
The campaign was launched via Soccer Girl Goals' social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and looks to educate the public through entertaining bite-sized content, and inspirational personal stories from prominent local female athletes.
With the aim of building a community of women in sport to support one another, Keeping Score has reached over 100,000 to date via its Instagram platform, and the numbers are still growing.
File photo: SportPlus.SG
Reaching Out
The campaign has also partnered with La Liga, EXPY the Lab, Edens Chips, Greenguards and Lugiami, connecting with over 30 local and international athletes across various sports in order to spread the word.
“The biggest problem is that this (gender discrimination) has been normalised. Most people don’t realize that certain acts are actually discriminatory in nature. Hence, female athletes do not really speak out against discrimination because they are worried about the backlash and don’t want to be seen as aggressive,” Brander Na, Content Lead of Keeping Score said.
Rallying the Community
To rally the community together and help to inspire the female sporting community, Keeping Score has engaged various prominent women in sports such as rugby coach, Wang Shao-ing, Singapore national team hockey player, Gene Leck and Singapore’s first female FIFA Player’s agent and Founder of Futbolita, Ash Hashim, to share their experiences with discrimination and how they dealt with it.
You can watch their full reactions to sexist and discriminatory remarks with videos courtesy of Keeping Score in our transcript article here.
Image credit: SportSG via Mann Renzaf
Building Awareness on Inequality
“Initiatives like Keeping Score are very important right now for women in sports because it builds awareness on the inequality and discrimination we face. This actually happens very often and people just don’t realise it, or if they do, they don’t know how to respond to it. Mutual respect in women's sports is still overlooked, and we must take steps to address this.” Ash Hashim, Founder of Futbolita, said.
To tackle this, Keeping Score has started a “Types of Discrimination” series to raise awareness on what constitutes discrimination, as well as a “How To Respond” series to provide recommendations on how to handle or respond to discrimination. This is done by arming the readers with facts, frameworks and real life examples.
For more details on the series, you can find out more from Soccer Girl Goals' website.