Barça Women and Men's teams to celebrate diversity on International Women's Day

FC Barcelona’s men’s and women’s football teams will be taking to the pitch this Saturday for their respective league matches wearing a specially designed home kit to celebrate diversity ahead of the upcoming International Women’s Day. The action is part of Barça’s new campaign to commemorate March 8, and which emphasises that it will only be possible to achieve equality if we are able to recognise and accept the differences between all human beings.

In the build-up to their match against Santa Teresa (3.00pm CET), the Barça women will be wearing a shirt with a special patch on the front asking “What makes you different?” while the names on their backs will be replaced by the most outstanding attributes that define them. And the shirt numbers will be replaced by an 8M, in reference to the date of International Women’s Day. Each player has personally chosen the attribute they will be wearing, including such terms as FEELING, PASSION, PERFORMANCE, COURAGE, STRENGTH, and COMMITMENT. The side coached by Lluís Cortés will also be wearing a lilac armband throughout the match. The women’s team’s official partner, STANLEY, with which Barça works together to promote women’s sport, has assisted with the planning of this action.

In the evening, the men’s team will wear a similar design against Osasuna (9pm CET). During the build-up, they will also be donning the “What makes you different?” patch and their names will also be replaced with a defining attribute and their numbers by 8M. Their chosen attributes include the likes of OPTIMISM, EFFORT and RESPECT. They will also be wearing lilac armbands.

The club’s other two professional teams that have games this Saturday, the handball and roller hockey sides, will also celebrating Women’s Day by wearing the lilac armband. The amateur teams will be doing likewise, the only exceptions being the men’s rugby and volleyball teams, whose games have been postponed due to the detection of positive cases of Covid-19. They will wear the armbands at their next fixtures instead.

The shirts will be auctioned and proceeds will go towards funding Barça Foundation inclusion programmes.

#WeAreAllDifferent8M

The actions planned for this Saturday are part of the #WeAreAllDifferent8M campaign promoted by the club to commemorate this year’s International Women’s Day, and which is being presented with the tagline “Only by valuing diversity, we can achieve equality.”

The campaign is also being taken into the digital realm. The club’s social networks will be inviting fans to showcase diversity by posting profile pictures of themselves making the mathematical symbol of difference (≠) and using the hashtag #WeAreAllDifferent8M. In similar fashion, Barça’s social media accounts will be publishing different images throughout the day of Barça players making the same sign.

The campaign will culminate on Monday 8 March, when Women’s Day is celebrated internationally, with the publication of a video on the club’s different media channels, and which features the women’s football team together with representatives of different areas of the club: a teacher from the Foundation’s Inclusion Program, one of the players from the pioneering Barça women’s team of 1970 and Sister Lucía Caram, a member of the Edelmira Calvetó Group. The video pays homage to diversity and advocates the need for society to understand and accept it in order to advance towards equality in all areas, both inside and outside of sport.