The Female Field was a simple change done to a football pitch to transform it into a place where every girl or woman feels like she belongs.

With one small addition, we created a movement that grew organically out of one single guerilla activation.

That is what makes The Female Field relevant to the category.

In the Arab world, sports have always been looked at culturally as not being appropriate for women. As a result of this belief being perpetuated for generations, most young Arab girls feel discouraged from pursuing sports and grow up believing that there is no room for Arab women in the professional sports world. In fact, 73% of them give up on sports by the age of 14.

Most young Arab girls hailing from conventional families grow up believing that sports are not for them. Because traditional Middle Eastern society has always insinuated that sports are not appropriate for women.

Resulting in 73% of young Arab girls giving up playing sports by the age of 14.

Ironically, in the Arabic language, most words associated with sports have a female gender. Words like ball, run, kick, jump, goal, shoot, pass and even the word sport itself are female words.

All these words end with the Arabic letter "Ta'Marbuta". Written as a circle with two dots on top.

This litter is what gives Arabic words their female gender.

Just as the "Ta'Marbuta" at the end of Arabic words gives them the female gender, we found a way to put it on a football pitch. By simply adding two dots right above the already existing center circle.

Following the same logic as the language itself, this letter gave the pitch a gender to - female.

Resulting in the world's first pitch to have a gender - female.

The first Female Field was created by adding the two dots on the home ground of Onyx FC, UAE's only all-women-owned and operated football team.

adidas had just signed Onyx FC. UAE's first and only owned and operated football team.

Our task was to announce this new sponsorship.

So, instead of simply announcing the addition of Onyx FC to the adidas family, we chose to do something that stands for Onyx FC's ethos. To give every girl the confidence and opportunity to play the sport she loves.

Whatever we did, needed to be simple enough to look like anyone could do it, yet powerful enough to spark conversations about the need for more support for women in sports.

The act of creating the Female Field was deliberately kept minimalistic and simple, yet powerful and unmissable. Additionally, because all it takes is two dots of any shape and form added over the center circle, it was intended to be recreated anywhere.

We started by releasing teasers on social media to highlight the fact that sports-related words in Arabic all have a female gender.

Then we filmed the addition of the two dots to the Onyx FC home pitch, by the captain of the team herself.

Followed by a series of content pieces shot at this new Female Field with different players of Onyx FC, further reinforcing our message.

Soon enough, ours was no longer the only female field. We saw countless ones popping up all across Dubai, and not just on football fields. Basketball courts, beach football pitches, even Ice Hockey rinks were being turned into Female Fields.

+16000 searches for Onyx FC in the first week

200% increase in sign-ups for all-girl training programs

27 female fields made and counting

The budget for actual activation was practically zero. The two dots were drawn using the same marking paint used on the pitch every day.

The content around the activation was captured by internal teams.

All the other Female Fields that popped up were created voluntarily by other women and girls across the city.