Founder/Editor Aviva Kempner Introduces the SEW (Sports Equality for Women) website (sewomen.org) at International Women’s Day Program
Washington, DC, March 8, 2021 – The Sports Equality for Women (SEW) website, conceived by prominent filmmaker Aviva Kempner, was created to offer women’s sports stories of aspirations, equality, and inequity on a daily basis, and archive them for the future to counter the lack of women’s sports stories in sports media coverage.
The goal of SEW is to “pull the thread on overlooked women’s sports stories and stitch together their place in the conversation.” SEW, a special project of The Ciesla Foundation, is composed of a team of correspondents, bloggers, and video makers to establish a competitive media outlet.
The website will be launched at the DC Jewish Community Center’s March 8 International Women’s Day program co-presented by The Ciesla Foundation, the Institute of Politics and History and Women in Film and Video. The panelists are Christine Brennan, USA sports columnist and CNN commenter, Former DC mayor Sharon Pratt, the Founding Director of the Institute of Public Policy and History and Aviva Kempner, filmmaker and DC statehood advocate. Kempner will screen a three-minute work-in-progress of her upcoming documentary Pissed Off, the crusade for potty parity by women elected officials on Capitol Hill.
SEW will celebrate and document the stories of women breaking records as athletes, and the glass ceiling as executives, referees, scouts and sports journalists. Their growing achievements increase the public recognition of ongoing abuse and inequities: pay inequality, sexism and harassment in the sports arena.
Founder and editor, Aviva Kemper, has produced award-winning documentaries about uplifting and heroic social structures for 40 years, with The Ciesla Foundation. Two films (The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg and The Spy Behind Home Plate) featured baseball heroes who faced anti-Semitism and fascism.
The Ciesla Foundation is now producing two new documentaries: Pissed Off, on female legislators achieving potty parity in Congress and Imagining the Indian that depicts the racism against Native Americans in sports mascoting.
In Kempner’s words, “Despite proving they can do anything men can, many female sports figures still endure pay inequality and are targeted through sexism and sexual harassment. Sports stories of women’s history, accomplishments and abuses continue to be hidden. Not anymore! SEW is bringing those stories to the forefront.”
