A French advertisement promoting its women’s national soccer team has gone viral for its genius way of addressing unconscious gender bias in the sport.
The commercial aired in late June as part of a campaign by telecom company Orange to promote its sponsorship of the French women’s team in this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The ad begins with what appears to be a compilation of outstanding plays by French men’s soccer stars, set to dramatic commentary and music.
Only Les Bleus [the French men’s team’s nickname] can give us these emotions…
But that’s not them you’ve just seen,” then appears on screen.
The video then rewinds and restarts to reveal that the footage is actually showing women’s team players, who were made to appear as their male counterparts through visual effects.
The video ends with the line, “At Orange, when we support les Bleus, we support les Bleues [the French women’s team’s nickname].
We made the observation that women’s soccer is underestimated, less followed and even mocked while the skills of the players are very impressive and matches can bring as much emotion as those of men,” an Orange spokesperson told CNN. “We wanted to rectify the truth and shift these received ideas.
Women’s soccer has notoriously been overlooked and undervalued, with the achievements of many women often overshadowed or completely left out compared to their male counterparts.
Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, often hailed as the top scorer in international soccer at 123 goals, is actually only the 8th highest scorer when both men and women players are taken into account
The top honor belongs to Canada’s Christine Sinclair at 190 goals.
Many World Cup feats and records set by the men have actually already been achieved or surpassed by one or more women players.
Though some progress has been made to boost interest and address the inequality, the soccer fandom is still heavily male-dominated.
The prize money for the FIFA women’s tournament was raised to US$150 million this year but is still only a third of the US$440 million given in the men’s 2022 World Cup.
FIFA says it hopes to reach equal pay by 2026 and 2027.
Source: FIFA
