Is your club equal in language?
Let's take a look into how equal football/soccer clubs are out there in terms of the language they choose to use at their websites.
When I was at Chelsea we went from using the references first team and ladies team to using men's first team and women's first team. To implement a new language internally staff had to pay a fine if they used only “first team” when referring to the mens team. If you truly want equality your language has to be on a par.
How is your club doing in this? Will they fall under group 1, 2 or 3?
Group 1
Equality between genders, including all their teams.
This example comes from Hammarby IF in Sweden. Refers to first team men and first team women and has the same kind of language for their academy and other teams as well (futsal in their case). Can still have some potential to become even better (not have the men first for example, and could also add a link to the women’s league website up top) but is pretty much top of the class as it stands right now.
Group 2
Equality on the first team level, not 100% below that.
Chelsea FC is the example here. They refer to their representation teams in equal language but do not mention the education for girls only their boys academy. They do however mention their female and male loan players. Teams without some but not proper representation of both genders will also end up in group 2, if you for example only have one representation team and only education for either girls or boys, or a big disparity between what you offer the two genders.
Group 3
Filled with untapped potential, in reality they really show that their benchmark is male and maybe there’s a bit of space for the women at the back of the room.
Example Rayo Vallecano in Madrid. Refers to their mens team as their first team by simply writing first team or team and puts their women's team somewhere at the website but only refers to them as women. Also if you want to find information, like the game schedule for the women, it is nowhere to be found, whereas you quite easily figure out when their men will play next. At least at foundation level they do speak to girls as well. In group 3 we can also find clubs that are only offering services to one gender.