Football team to wear shirts showing sexist challenges facing women
Brazilian football team Cruzeiro is set to display the struggles women face – such as rape, murder and pay inequality – on their shirts.
The numbers emblazoned on the back of the historically successful team’s jerseys will be accompanied by words to form statistics like “a woman killed every 2 hours”.
Other messages on view in tonight’s Brazilian Cup game against Murici will include “Salaries 30% lower” and an acknowledgement that only 22 percent of parliamentarians in the world and 12 percent of Brazilian mayors are female.
The eastern club, which competes in the top league and won the domestic treble in 2003, has launched the campaign – called “#VamosMudarOsNúmeros” or “Let’s Change The Numbers” – in honour of International Women’s Day.
Cruzeiro cederá espaço na camisa para expor realidade das mulheres. https://t.co/X9svrVTM6o#VamosMudarOsNúmeros pic.twitter.com/i7g5sy1xFt
— Cruzeiro E. Clube (@Cruzeiro) March 8, 2017
“Women don’t want congratulations. They want respect,” begins the club’s beautiful statement of intent on its website.
“March 8 is, in fact, a symbolic event. It is a day for reflection and awareness.
“It is a day to know, for example, that every two hours, a woman is killed and that Brazil is the fifth country in the world in rate of femicide.
“It is a day to know, too, that out of every ten unemployed, seven are women and that of every ten young people, eight have already suffered harassment.
“March 8 is not a day of celebration. It is a day to remember that women are still (and very) oppressed. Commemoration will happen when they, in fact, reach their rightful place, which is that of equality.
“March 8 is there to remind you that the world just never walked, does not walk and will never walk forward without the woman.
“But that, for that, we need to be together and value their struggles, every moment, every second.
“As the song goes, women want to have fun. But, first of all, they want to be heard and, above all, respected.”
The move comes just days after the Sweden national women’s football team eschewed names to wear messages from women on the back of their shirts instead.
The quotes included the artist Zara Larsson’s “Believe in your damn self” and journalist Frida Soderlund’s “To try is to be successful. The result is secondary as long as you dare”.
Here is a full list of Cruzeiro’s messages:
Every two hours, one is killed
They do three times more housework
Five times more women are killed
Of every ten unemployed, seven are women
Of every ten young people, eight have suffered sexual harassment
Only nine out of 100 members of parliament
Three in every 10 have been kissed by force
Every 11 minutes, one is raped
Only 12 percent of the mayors of Brazil
17 percent of female prisoners are in prison with men
Only 22 percent of the parliamentarians of the world
Of 23 of the municipal governments in Brazil, they have no female representatives
25 percent have postpartum depression
27 percent stay with their domestic abuser
Only 29 percent of the protagonists in films are women
Salaries are 30 percent less than men
A bit more than 31 per cent of candidates for election in Brazil
33 percent have suffered being harassed in the street
35 percent have suffered being harassed on public transport
37 percent of employees in big firms are women
Partners commit 38 percent of homicides of women
Of female harassment, 39 percent were with terribly rude words
70 percent of the people who are starving worldwide are women
