Most Arab women who hail from conventional families are raised to believe that sports like football are not meant for women. Deeming it against Arab cultural norms.

Ironically, in the Arabic language that predates these cultural beliefs by hundreds of years, most words associated with football have a female gender.

Words like Ball, skill, strength, goal, kick and tackle are all words that in Arabiv have a female gender.

The one Arabic letter that gives every word its female gender is called the Ta'Marbuta - ة

This circle with two dots on top is proof that while Arab society may believe women should not be playing sports, the language they all speak has always intended for football to be female.

If adding this letter to football-related words makes them female, then perhaps the same can be true for other aspects of the game.

So we turned the home ground of UAE’s first female owned and run football club, Onyx FC, into the world’s first pitch to have a gender. 
In this case - female. 



By making just one change to the pitch. We added two dots above the centre circle of the field.



Transforming it into the Arabic letter Ta'Marbuta, and by doing so, turning the pitch into a symbol of equality for the world of Middle Eastern football.