Guess who? New board game puts the spotlight on women

Polish designer’s handcrafted puzzle set turns global success

January 08, 2019 10:55 pm | Updated 10:55 pm IST - London

Play on:  ‘Who’s She?’ was made possible through crowdfunding.

Play on: ‘Who’s She?’ was made possible through crowdfunding.

Did she win a Nobel Prize? Was she an inventor? Did she make a discovery?

These are some of the questions that Polish designer Zuzanna Kozerska-Girard wants more children to ask as they learn about famous women while playing her debut board game ‘Who’s She?’.

“We basically don’t know their stories. We don’t know enough about women who have done amazing stuff,” said Kozerska-Girard, founder of games company Playeress.

Similar to the classic game ‘Guess Who?’, two players are each given a biography card of a famous woman and must ask each other questions until her identity is answered correctly: be it French spy Josephine Baker or Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.

“The game is for girls as much as it is for boys. They need to see powerful women around them and see them as their heroes,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The game is being sold at a time when the achievements of women — from scientists, politicians, campaigners and artists — are increasingly being recognised online and in public spaces.

Featuring watercolour illustrations of 28 female icons, Ms. Kozerska-Girard said she designed the game, which costs €75 (₹6,0000, because she wanted children to know that women of all nationalities were as capable as men in any profession.

“If you’re a girl who’s three years old and you see men everywhere in positions with more power, you’ll just think that that’s the way it is,” said Ms. Kozerska-Girard.

“I think it’s important to bring this (gender gap) up with kids — and the simple way to do this is by playing games.”

Since ‘Who’s She?’ launched in November on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, Ms. Kozerska-Girard has sold more than 6,000 units and received some €500,000 to produce the game, which she hand-makes out of wood.

Meanwhile, in India, Twitter launched a new campaign on Tuesday called #WebWonderWomen to celebrate women achievers.

The campaign, in partnership with the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) and human rights organisation Breakthrough, will allow users to nominate women who they consider rising stars in various fields.

The woman should be an achiever under one of the following categories: health or fitness, community, media, literature, art, sports, technology travel, business, legal or policy, governmental, entertainment, fashion or beauty, finance, food and environment.

(With inputs from PTI)

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.