#wecanplay Campaign

The #wecanplay campaign aims to get rid of the preconception that girls and women can't play football and boost participation and was launched in 2015. The FA says despite football being the largest team sport for girls and women in the country peer pressure, gender stereotyping and derogatory internet searches all contribute to a perpetuation of a distorted image of the women's game. Furthermore the FA states that in a recent survey four out of five young girls who play football don't feel confident doing so. This could be due to the attitude of parents as mum's and dads are less likely to encourage their daughters to play football than their sons. The aim of the campaign according to FA is to gain the support of 100,000 girls and parents as part of its drive to boost participation. The only issue with this campaign is that since it launch in 2015 I personally haven't see an advert or poster relating to the campaign. I only found the campaign when I started to research about women's football which is a huge problem, as a football fan you expect the FA to target existing fans as well as the wider community in order to build a successful campaign and encourage more women and girls to participate as lots of young girls and women watch/like football but feel unconfident to actually participate in the sport. 

In relation to the campaign itself its quite successful in highlighting and debunking common stereotypes about women in football by showing athletes alongside these stereotypes. However the implementation of the campaign fails to fully communicate the aim which is to encourage girls to participate in football due to its lack of distribution with mainstream football media. The combination of a video and still ads create a consistant campaign (see figures 1-3) that portrays a defiant message to those who believe women and girls can't play football. However I personally think the problems surrounding women's football are mainly due to the in-balance between the male and female version of the sport rather than participation, as if women's football was given more recognition within mainstream sports media. That in itself would boost participation as it would become more acceptable and normal for women and girls to play football as it would be more widely recognised and seen.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3