Who is EWA

EWA is a collaborative partnership co-financed by the European Commission thanks to the ERASMUS+ programme.
Yes, but...

“EWA is not just a project, She is an ideal. She is every girl and every woman who loves her sport, who wants to feel safe in the changing rooms of her club, respected as a human being, acknowledged as an athlete, supported by her team of professionals. EWA is the female athlete who struggles every single day to break records, win games, have fun.”

Why we do it

Fighting women harassment and discrimination in sports

Discrimination and harassment towards women in sports is a problem that is pervasively perceived by female athletes in all sports.

Discriminative attitudes or behaviour enacted by men are only the tip of an iceberg that constantly endangers and puts pressure on female athletes in all main sporting fields and pitches.

Each of these — violence, abuse, harassment, and discrimination — refers to a set of dynamics that overlaps with the others, and each of them find expression on a broad range of levels (verbal, physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, social, cultural, organisational, economic, media, etc.) and for different noxious purposes (personal self-esteem of the offender, sexual fulfilment, financial exploitation, cultural subjugation, status gain, etc.).

Needs identified during the project design : the partnership

• Ensuring safety of female athletes, especially the youngest. A discriminative culture acts as a pervasive dissuasive factor distancing women from the world of sports since the youngest age.
• Promoting the inclusion of women in sports.
  
• Celebration of sport as a force of equality, meritocracy, acceptance of diversity and inclusion and the essential positive impact that women can bring to sports intended as a community.
  
• Combating the hegemonic culture that permeates most competitive sports. Sport still remains, in many ways, a domain of masculine expression, thanks to how media portrays and narrates athletes and their lifestyles (e.g. famous footballers).
  This narrative needs to be countered.

Who we’ll do it with

Our target groups

• Ambassadors of Equal Rights in Sports: A group of female athletes selected and trained during the project, which will play the crucial role of directly impacting on the other target groups.
• Female athletes in Europe: The very core of our project: newcomers, amateurs, professionals.
• Sports professionals: Executives, coaches, health professionals, reporters, who want to counter the chauvinist culture that is imposed on them while working with female athletes.
• Sports audience: On the one side, they promote the development of feminine sports by participating in matches and games, while on the other side, they are statistically recognised as the main violent offenders of the athletes of whom they are fans.

What we’ll do

The general objectives

We will develop a community of female athletes, professionals, sport managers and policy makers in Europe to actively prevent and counter violence, abuse, harassment, and discrimination against female athletes in key sports environments, providing them with knowledge, education, and practical tools specifically designed by the project.

Specific objectives

1. Attract key stakeholders in Europe already dealing with our project themes, involving them in a structured dialogue on the state of the art and next steps to take.
2. Promote an innovative and multi-layered response to the problems tackled, maximising and building on past experiences, and creating new strategies and tools at EU level.
3. Activate beneficiaries in Europe with an awareness-raising campaign aiming at acknowledging and valorising the role of women in sports.
4. Produce and disseminate counter-narratives on women in sports through a social media campaign.
5. Test and assess a training and empowering methodology with AERS and sports professionals (coaches, tutors, managers, etc.).
6. Experiment a peer-to-peer support system to encourage adoption of concrete solutions to the problem of serious violence and abuse of female athletes.
7. Create a petition and submit it at European level.