Correct The Internet & DDB NZ on a mission to highlight bias against women's sport
If you ask the internet who has scored the most goals in international football, it will tell you it's Cristiano Ronaldo with 118. However, Canada’s Christine Sinclair actually holds the record with 190.
This is one of the central reasons behind an important global campaign by Correct The Internet, which aims to highlight the bias of searchable facts online and the negative impacts they have on women.
Created in partnership with DDB Aotearoa NZ, the campaign lifts the lid on the ways women in sports are disadvantaged and nods towards how much deeper these bias may go.
The campaign seeks to make sportswomen more visible by promoting the need to correct inaccuracies online. It is led by Rebecca Sowden, a former New Zealand Football Fern.
According to Correct The Internet, "Many of the world’s best athletes are women. And many of the world’s sporting records are held by women. But due to human bias, our search engines have learnt to prioritise sportsmen in our search results, even when the facts put sportswomen first. We want to change that.
"By using each search engine’s inbuilt feedback function to send feedback whenever we find something wrong, we can get the inconsistencies in our search results logged and fixed. So we’re collecting the incorrect search results, and have built a tool so you can help us correct them with just a couple of clicks. The internet has learnt our bias. We created it. We have the power to fix it."
Correct The Internet is a global initiative supported by women's sports marketing consultancy Team Heroine, which was founded by Sowden, and UN gender equality initiative, Football for the Goals.
Other supporters include Women In Sport Aotearoa, Women Sport Australia and New Zealand Football.