Skater women take on sport’s sexism
A SKATEBOARDING clothing brand run entirely by women that ploughs part of their profits into charity hopes to make the sport more inclusive through sales of their wear.
Doyenne Skateboards is a collective of female skaters who have designs on ensuring better representation of women, LGBTQ people and people of colour in the skateboarding community.
Founded in 2017 by three women who choose to remain anonymous, preferring their work to speak for itself, Doyenne makes brightly coloured hoodies, T-shirts and accessories.
They said: “We like Doyenne to stand for itself as a social brand as there is a community that helps us and we don’t want to take all the credit.”
But revealing that the clothing line was women-run was vital. Doyenne said:
“Generally women in history never took credit for what they did so we wanted to let people know that we were a skateboarding brand run by women.”
In a sport that is overwhelmingly male, Doyenne’s aim is to encourage more people who might not see themselves reflected in the usual demographic of their local skatepark to pick up a board.
Their collection is “ungendered” by design with colours and fabrics flouting any received gender stereotypes.
They said: “We think there’s no point in making gendered clothing especially in skateboarding where girls, boys and even people that don’t identify with any gender all dress the same so being ungendered in that way is inclusive.”
One of the founders started skateboarding in her early twenties but noticed a real “absence of women” on the scene. She said: “I wanted to start when I was younger but in my mind I didn’t think it was something I could have done. ”
Setting up Doyenne was a direct response to the glaring lack of representation and the brand now plays a part in making the sport more accessible to anyone who wants to try it.
Doyenne said: “Women and other minorities already have to fight to find a place in general. Our brand is a way to make it easier for everyone so they don’t need to keep fighting.”
Helping the wider global community is important to Doyenne who wanted to reach further than Scotland when it came to their ethos of empowerment and equality.
They said: “We wanted to think outside of our box. There are really different realities than ours where it’s not really about skateboarding they have no rights. So if we want everyone to be included in skateboarding we need to think about people living in different situations.”
A percentage of every item sold is donated to organisations that support women or disadvantaged young people through education and skateboarding.
Profits from their latest collection goes to Free Movement Skateboarding, a non-profit that works with young refugees in Athens. Previous collections have supported Skatepal, who aid young people in Palestine, and Concrete Jungle Foundation who have built skateparks in Peru and Angola.
As well as designing merchandise, Doyenne runs monthly beginners skateboarding sessions in their bid to make changes more locally.
They said: “A lot of people have started skating after the sessions, which makes us really happy. We can see the joy in people’s faces.”
They added: “We wanted to create a brand that every type of person of every gender and ability and sexuality could say, this is something for me, it’s made for people like me.”