Closing The Gender Equality Gap through Football
Gibraltar Wave has existed since March 2021. What`s our difference from other clubs? We are the first women-only football club in Gibraltar`s history. This was done without taking a single player from the other four clubs as we want to help develop women`s football and give the female community in Gibraltar a platform to help improve their Body and Mind Health.
We are working very hard to be the Web3 Metaverse club of the 21st century and brands like https://www.sponsoo.com/p/gibraltarwavefc and https://blocksport.io are helping us in finding ways to grow. Reducing the Gender Equality Gap motivates and drives us along with our community-enhancing efforts.
Urban #3x3eachSoccer
At Gibraltar Wave we play 11-a-aside soccer, futsal and invented and patented #3x3eachSoccer. In our first season, we qualified directly for the Champions League finals in Beach Soccer. We are specifically looking for sponsors to take the team to Nazaré (Portugal) where the Champions League finals in Beach Soccer will be held and also working to create a #3x3eachSoccer World Tour kicking of in Gibraltar streamed to the world for which we are looking for a broadcasting partner like DAZN.
Our preferred sponsor
Ideally, we are looking for a sponsor who knows exactly how difficult it is to find sponsors in women’s soccer and who is willing to tread a common path with us. Furthermore, the brand should be willing to break new ground and work very closely with us, because only together can we achieve our goals. Our sponsor knows that every cent counts and that our players are all amateur.
Blocksport is a Swiss SportsTech. They build web3-ready platform solutions for the professional sports and entertainment industry to enable NFT and Fan Token use cases for their fan community. Their solutions open untapped revenue streams and strengthen the community engagement. Blocksport provides a unique digital ecosystem solution that combines fan applications, fan tokens, and NFTs for sports entities.
It`s a place where clubs can Discover, create, and distribute NFTs to satisfy the demand of their fans and help raise funds to keep sports club running and entertaining sport lovers worldwide
Blocksport is Shaping the future of sports and that of Gibraltar Wave FC with an app we`re very proud of.
Community Intergration and affiliation with Mons Calpe
Does partnering with men’s clubs help or hinder women’s football teams? Historically, women have been discouraged from involvement in sectors of society, including participating and competing in sport (European Commission Citation2014, United Nations Citation2019). This has especially been the case for traditionally male-dominated sports such as football (Caudwell Citation 2011). Football represents a typical example of strong gender bias, with women accounting for less than 10% of total registered players, 28% of the total administrative workforce, 25% of the total management staff and 7% of the total coaches (FIFA Citation2019a). Giulianotti (Citation1999) and Williams (Citation2007) indicate that football institutions have been historical active opponents of the women’s game. However, it can be argued that governing bodies have shifted towards becoming supportive of women’s football development more recently (Gammelsæter and Senaux Citation 2011).
In 2018, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) launched the first-ever global strategy for women’s football, in which it stated its goal for all its 211 National Associations (NAs) to have dedicated women’s football development programmes by 2022 (FIFA Citation2018). Actions of meso level institutions, such as NAs or public authorities responsible for sport policy making, are decisive for the advancement of the sport. According to Soss and Schram (Citation2007), policies can play a key role in altering conceptions and influencing public attitudes and perceptions. This is of particular importance to women’s football, due to it being positioned within a complex and gendered environment (Pfister Citation 2010, Allison Citation 2016, Citation 2017). Nonetheless, literature to date has dedicated limited attention to analyse NAs’ engagement with policies aimed at furthering the growth of women’s football (Bell Citation 2012, Kjær and Agergaard Citation 2013, Woodhouse et al. Citation 2019, Añorve Citation 2020).
We did our homework and decided in affiliating with Mons Calpe men`s team while still keeping Gibraltar Wave independent. It`s good to see UEFA and GFA interested in not only Empowering women in and through football.
Gibraltar stands a much better chance of doing much better in women`s football than men`s as men`s football is much more advanced in Europe. However, the distance to the top in women`s football is shorter.
Over the last decade, women’s football has experienced an unprecedented period of growth. This is an achievement the industry as a whole can be most proud of.
Though, this is only the first step – a step in the right direction, of course – but only a first step all the same. There is still so much more work to be done to realise the game’s full potential.
The sustainability of the modern football club is built on three fundamental pillars: the men’s team, the women’s team, and the academy. UEFA have recently seen many men’s clubs, including some of the traditional heavyweights in Europe, investing in the women’s game and launching and developing successful teams. However, women teams also need to be “independent” to be able to grow on its own right.
The Future pillar of Football is Women`s football and the society should back efforts of clubs like Gibraltar Wave FC. The reality is that the growth of women’s football can only be achieved through taking creative action. This responsibility does not lie with just one organisation alone, but will require the whole women’s football community and its stakeholders to play their part. Improve women’s football competitions and nurture the next generation of talented female players.
I have been in the game long enough to fully understand the inequalities that exist and our ability to do something about it. I’m therefore proud Gibraltar Wave is doing something to change things but we need backing not from sponsors and from the authorities like GFA, UEFA and FIFA who to be honest are working hard on making things easier for us the the women`s game.
Inspiring creative action to help clubs drive a better tomorrow for women’s football Full scale gender equality in football is an ambitious goal but one that we and many embrace today. We need to work as a collective, from top to bottom, to be the changemakers needed to enable the women’s game to grow sustainably, We want to thrive and ultimately to prosper.
Gibraltar Wave is ‘first of its kind’ in Gibraltar and maybe in Europe too!!
Football Fan App is another great platform that is kindly giving Gibraltar Wave exposure. Football for women needs all the support it can get. Liking a news story as we have seen many fans and readers do in Gibraltar Insight is an excellent start and makes us proud.
