Ahead of the Women’s Six Nations Finals Weekend, which takes place on Saturday, April 24, Guinness has partnered with Wikimedia UK to ensure that every member of the competing home nation squads is properly recorded on the site viewed 18 billion times globally every month – adding over 135,000 words to their profiles.
With only 6% of sports media coverage in the UK dedicated to female athletes and teams, the shortage of data and information on women’s players needs to be tackled so that the disparity in media portrayal of the sporting community can be closed.
Currently, just 18% of biographies on Wikipedia are of women, but this gap widens further in sport where just 3% of 14,916 rugby related biographies are of female players and the current Guinness Six Nations men’s squads have 392% more words devoted to them than their female counterparts.
Furthermore just 30% of the current Women’s Six Nation squad players have a presence on Wikipedia, and of those who did, 86% didn’t have an image or more than a very basic biography. In addition, the international team pages see a stark disparity, with the current male rugby squads receiving more than 9,000 words on their page, whereas the women’s teams have on average just 900.
In order to tackle the disparity 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.
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 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% of those were about the women’s sport.
Lucy Crompton-Reid, CEO of Wikimedia UK said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Guinness for this project, to shine a light on women’s rugby players and their achievements. As the UK charity for the global Wikimedia movement, we are well aware of the gender gap online – which reflects systemic bias and historical inequalities – and are working with a wide range of partners to increase the representation of women on Wikipedia.”
Neil Shah, Head of Guinness GB said: “We know it’s hard to be what you can’t see. We believe the first step in increasing the visibility for women’s rugby players in line with the men’s game is spotlighting who they are – this step will make getting to know them easier than ever by bringing their stories to Wikipedia.”
As partner of the Women’s Six Nations, Guinness will also continue its support of the Player of the Championship in 2021.
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