Help us close the gender gap on Wikipedia!
This International Women’s Day, do you wonder why only 20% of wiki entries are on women? Hint: 80% of wiki editors are men. Let’s change this! If you have an area of interest — women in gaming, STEM, the arts, religion, specific cultures and history — let’s bring women’s accomplishments to light.
So far we are shift7, AnitaB.org, blackcomputeHER.org, TimesUp Tech, AfroCROWD Wikimedia Initiative and User Group, Wiki Women in Red, Indigenous DC, the Female Quotient, Women in AI, Thousand Eyes On Me, Women Techmakers, and Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls (phew!). We are all coming together in coalition to help close the gender gap on Wikipedia — sometimes called the “WikiGap.”
Join us to highlight the inspiring, though undocumented accomplishments of women. History reflects the tellers!
Join us in editing and lifting up the work!
Ready-Set-Go: Monday March 8 at 8:00 a.m. PT/11:00 a.m. ET for our kick off panel Editing Together for Equality: A Faster Path to Close the Serious ‘WikiGap’.
Why is this important?
History has not been captured in a balanced way. The people writing in Wikipedia choose who and what they write about — and naturally they write about what they are interested in. 80–90% of Wikipedia editors are men and less than 20% of profiles on Wikipedia profile women. So, there is a huge “WikiGap” in the coverage in Wikipedia so far.
“In October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia’s biographies were about women.[1] Founded in July 2015, Women in Red (WiR) strives to increase the percentage, which has reached 18.72% as of 1 February 2021. But that means, according to WHGI, only 333,928 of our 1,784,219 biographies are about women. Not impressed? “Content gender gap” is a form of systemic bias, and WiR addresses it in a positive way through shared values.” — Wiki Women in Red
Let’s change that! How?
1) Welcome and empower more people to contribute directly into Wikipedia as well as create materials that can be referenced — there’s much we can do to dramatically expand the inclusion of women and people of all marginalized genders:
- many more profiles on Wikipedia for their notable work; learn to create and edit pages to help, learn how to cite credible reference materials.
- expand the breadth of profiles by adding quality contributions to existing pages (many pages lack notable details).
- share more of their creations.
- be inclusive of teams around individuals — sometimes pages only credit some of the people who created the work; find reference materials to cite and fix the credit bias.
- be mindful about unconscious bias language when writing, and remove unconscious bias language if you find it.
- research and write more source articles about people and their contributions — and cite them as references in Wikipedia. Some humans get more access to giving talks, being interviewed by media, funded, cited, etc… we have to make up for that by sharing amazing work by everyone, publishing incredible sources that can later be cited. Check out 20 for 2020 for an example of previous work.
- digitize physical archives make more of this history known and accessible.
- don’t be discouraged by deletions — find ways to cite credible sources and keep trying. It took Donna Strickland winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for her work to be considered “notable” enough for a Wikipedia living person page.
2) Bring all kinds of networks and people together to collaborate and have FUN!
- Help everyone feel welcome — learn to edit together, share stories, reach out and welcome colleagues and friends to join in. We need everyone. It’s ok to start small and “crawl-walk-run” and — there are many roles.
- Engage youth! (and the young at heart)
- Contributing to Wikipedia is part of Digital Literacy for all — everyone is welcome and can add to this shared world knowledge resource.
Never edited a Wikipedia page? Here are resources to get started!
- Hear and read more about the WikiGap here.
- “Editing Basics” — wonderful 3 minute overview by Ariel Cetrone, Institutional Partner Manager Wikimedia DC:
- Women in Red talkpage
- Women in Red essays
- Here’s a link to a recent training video on how to edit Wikipedia articles — 1 hour training from OpenDataCollaboratives:
“Enock Seth Nyamador gives an introduction to editing Wikipedia ahead of International Women’s Day and encourages editors to contribute content about the lives and contributions of women and counter the current trend of writing only about the work of their husbands, fathers, sons, brothers.” The video shares how to start (how to create an account, how to work in either the source code editor or the visual editor, choose language, and more) and then how to contribute edits or create pages, citing, learning about policies and guidelines, and more.
Join Us:
- Kick off panel March 8 at 8 am PT/11 am ET Editing Together for Equality: A Faster Path to Close the Serious “WikiGap”.
- Women in Red edit-a-thon events. Note — there are edit-a-thons ongoing globally (the WikimediaDC team supports over 40 per year — topical, regional, communities, and more).
- Do you have a specific area of interest? Women in gaming, STEM, the arts, religion, specific cultures and history? See below for success stories that inspire us and join them!
- Already a Wikipedia editing rockstar? Gather friends and colleagues — here’s how to host your own edit-a-thon.
- Interested in expanding the images of women on line? Join #VisibleWikiWomen.
- Write or support more articles to be written about women in reputable local, regional, topical, national, international publications — cite and share that content in Wikipedia. Independent, verifiable sources and original research are important — help with the creation or digitization of these resources for all women so they can be cited in wikipedia articles.
Examples of previous edit-a-thons:
- Just finished: 2021 Smithsonian NMAAHC + blackcomputeHER.org edit-a-thon
- 2015 White House first ever edit-a-thon
These success stories inspire us. Join them!:
- Wikiproject: Women in Red: “Women in Red (WiR), established in 2015, is an international community of editors of all genders who edit different languages Wikipedias. The focus is on reducing systemic bias in the wiki movement by creating and improving content about women — their biographies, their works, and their issues.“
- AfroCROWD: “An initiative to create and improve information about black culture and history on Wikipedia. The New York City-based project was founded by Alice Backer in 2015.”
- WikiGap: WikiGap’s mission is to “close the internet gender gap.”
- Atari Women: “AtariWomen is a research project aimed at celebrating the hidden stories of women who made crucial engineering contributions to Atari games in the early 1970s and 1980s.”
- Wikiproject: 1000 Women in Religion: “1000 Women in Religion is a project of the Women’s Caucus of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. This project is part of an initiative to create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles pertaining to the lives of cis and transgender women who are notable as scholars, activists and practitioners in the world’s religious, spiritual and wisdom traditions.”
- ArtAndFeminism: “We write with enthusiasm inviting you to join this work in 2021 as we continue to address the gender gap and center on the work of women, feminist, BIPOC, queer, non-binary, and immigrant art and artists.”
- Smithsonian Institution’s American Women’s History Initiative: “aims to transform the narrative of history to better reflect a diversity of women’s and girls’ stories. We will highlight the stories of those who identify as women and girls, and those who were designated female but self-identify differently. It includes programming and events, initiative focused curators across nine museums, and a digital-first strategy to reach 1 billion people a year.”
- WikiProject Women artists: “WikiProject dedicated to ensuring quality and coverage of biographies of women artists and their works. This is to help solve the systemic bias against women artists in Wikipedia. Women artists comprise visual and performance artists.”
- WikiProject Women scientists: “a WikiProject and working group dedicated to ensuring quality and coverage of biographies of women scientists. In line with our larger umbrella group, WikiProject Women, we seek to counter and remedy the systemic bias with women on Wikipedia.”
- WikiProject Women writers: “is a WikiProject dedicated to ensuring quality and coverage of articles about women writers and their works. There are more than 56,282 articles within the scope of this WikiProject. You are warmly welcome to increase the quantity and improve the quality of these articles. Many are still missing so let’s keep working.”
