CFF Olympia is the first all-female football club in Spain. They are amateur and have limited resources, yet their youth team managed to stir the conscience of millions of people on International Women's Day.

The girls decided to melt down their own medals to create a new symbol, a star that would pay tribute to all sportswomen. "Stars for Equality" was born, unique stars, with a missing point, symbolizing the equality missing in sport.

CFF Olympia did not want young female footballers to feel that this appalling medal presentation was all they had to aspire to. They wanted change. And they did it.

Thanks to this media hype, the Royal Spanish Football Federation admitted, for the first time in its history, that the treatment of the female players in the Super Cup final had been inadequate. Its president, Luis Rubiales, declared on television that "the medals were a big cock-up".

On 15 January 2023, FC Barcelona's men's team won the Spanish Super Cup against Real Madrid. The final was played in Saudi Arabia, and the medal ceremony was an Olympic Games-style celebration, attended by Spanish Football Federation officials.

Just one week later, on 22 January 2023, FC Barcelona's women's team won the same competition against Real Sociedad in Mérida, Spain. But the medal ceremony was very different. No one from the Spanish Football Federation went onto the pitch to present the medals to the players. The Barça and Real Sociedad players had to collect and put on their own medals. This image went around the world, it became a trending topic and headline news.

It was blatantly clear that equality between men and women was and still is an unresolved issue in society and, especially, in football.

Inequality in sport remains a latent reality around the world, especially, in Spain. According to the collective agreement for professional footballers, approved in 2022, players are entitled to a minimum salary of 16,000 euros per year, while their male counterparts have a minimum salary limit of 155,000 euros. The differences are also evident in the news coverage of sporting competitions. In Spain, 22% of the news covering sports competitions refers to women, according to the study 'The visibility of women's sport in the media'. Similarly, international organisations such as FIFA distinguish between men and women when awarding their prizes.

For example, at the previous edition of the Women's World Cup in July 2023 in Australia, FIFA distributed 30 million dollars in prizes, compared to more than 400 million dollars at last year's World Cup in Qatar. In other words, the same federation's awards 13 times more prize money to men. This serious discrimination in prize money happens in virtually every elite sport in the world (with the exception of a few tennis tournaments). And it is becoming a major problem.

The creative idea for the protest campaign was inspired by a well-known symbol: the STAR that players receive when they win a World Cup, it is the highest honour that any female or male football player can aspire to. The Olympia girls decide to melt down all their medals and turn them into stars, but special stars with one point missing, to symbolise that equality for women's football has not yet been achieved.

The Olympia Las Rozas Women's Football Club is the first all-female football club in Spain. The club decided to act in the face of the contempt experienced by the professional female players at the final of the 2023 Spanish Super Cup, when the players had to collect and put on their own medals.

Olympia could not allow this medal presentation to be the "inspiration" and precedent for girls and young women who want to play football.

Olympia's values are equal opportunities, the empowerment of women, and the motivation of girls and young women for sport.

In defense of these values, a protest campaign was born, directed not only to the world of women's football, but also to society as a whole and we decided to launch it on International Women's Day.

The club showed images of the medal presentation to their youth team who reacted with disbelief and indignation.

The girls decided to melt down their own medals to create a new symbol, a star that would pay tribute to all sportswomen. "Stars for Equality" was born, unique stars, with a missing point, symbolizing the equality missing in sport.

To reach the greatest number of people, the Club created a web page where anyone could pledge virtual medals to create more stars. In addition, the club sent stars to all professional football players, football journalists and the general media. These stars were accompanied by the video of the Spanish Super Cup "no medal award ceremony", which went viral, and a protest note signed by the young players.

Simultaneously the girls’ video went viral on social media encouraging more people to join the movement and pay tribute to Spanish women football players.

This original way of paying tribute made headlines in the main sports media (Marca, Relevo, Mundo Deportivo). Six national first division women's football teams joined the initiative, wearing their stars for equality and publicly calling on football clubs for greater equality in the world of sport.

The most impressive thing was that on International Women’s Day, this initiative opened the newscasts of the most important television channels in the country (TVE and Antena3).

Thanks to this media hype, the Royal Spanish Football Federation admitted, for the first time in its history, that the treatment of the female players in the Super Cup final had been inadequate. And few months after these words of apology from the President of the Federation, he himself would have to resign for his unacceptable behaviour and sexual harassment during the celebration of the final of the Women's World Cup in 2023.