Wednesday, March 8 is International Women’s Day, and people all around the world are taking action in order to celebrate women, as well as highlight the issues that affect them on a daily basis. It’s in that spirit that Brazilian soccer club Cruzeiro unveiled their plan for the day, revealing that they will wear specially-designed jerseys in their Brazilian Cup match against Murici-AL on Wednesday.
The jerseys will feature messages about those aforementioned issues facing women today, such as femicide, sexual assault, postpartum depression, and the wage gap.
The club announced the move on their website with a statement from Cruzeiro President Gilvan de Pinho Tavares. In it, Tavares said “International Women’s Day is not just a moment to bring to the surface all the characteristics of inequality that still exist in Brazil and the world, but it is also a moment of awareness of other aspects related to women. It’s important to have a moment of this, where you can bring up such important and women-related issues.”
The initiative was set up in cooperation with Brazilian NGO AzMina, which works to empower women in Brazil. The director of AzMina, Leticia Bahia, praised the jerseys, saying that “a lot of people think that the fight for women’s rights is not needed anymore, but the data that the players will share [on their jerseys] shows how important this issue still is.” Cruzeiro also partnered with its jersey manufacturers, Umbro, and the New360 marketing agency on the campaign.
Twitter user @8Alves8 translated all of the jersey meanings, which range from assault statistics to research on labor disparities affecting women.