Are balls sexist?
This project explores how gender shapes the design of sports objects, focusing on the football. For more than a century, sport was created by men and for men, and women were discouraged or even banned from participating. As a result, today’s “neutral” standards in sport are often based on male physiology, forcing women to adapt to rules, equipment, and expectations that were never designed for them.
Football is a striking example: unlike other ball sports, the men’s and women’s game follow identical rules, even though the original regulations were historically tailored to male bodies. Research shows that women playing with a standard football must produce significantly more effort relative to their physical attributes. If men had to experience the same level of disadvantage, they would play with a ball roughly 6 cm larger in circumference and 200 g heavier, a truly “unfair” ball.
An episode of the Swiss science program Einstein (SRF) tested this idea by having male youth players train with such a “supersized” ball. Their struggle made visible what women routinely face: adapting to a supposedly universal standard that actually fits only one group.
As a designer, I use these data not to highlight limits, but to show the extraordinary performance of women who have excelled within a male-normed system. The goal is not to diminish football, but to reimagine it, and to shift the way we look at women’s sport.
The smaller interactive balls displayed during the exhibition contained various gender-based statistics collected through research and surveys.
The installation also invited visitors to try the “supersize” ball themselves:
650 g and 76 cm in circumference, compared with a standard
650 g and 76 cm in circumference, compared with a standard
450 g, 70 cm football.
"Exhibited at Pyxis, in Lausanne, in October 2025, as part of Beaucoup beaucoup de de balles, an exhibition of beaucoup beaucoup collective"
In collaboration with Einstein, Wissenschaftsprogramm, SRF (Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen)
Credits
beaucoup beaucoup + Einstein — Wissenschaftsprogramm de la Schweizer Fernsehen SRF