Dear all,
I think all of us use Wikipedia, so I do not have to explain what it is :) I also think that it is increasingly common knowledge that it is a "wiki" and so anyone can edit it. What is less common knowledge, and of more interest to Ladies of Hive, are the following:
- Wikipedia has a major gender gap issue (at least it admits it openly, for example, there is a "gender bias on Wikipedia"Wikipedia article...). Less than 25% of volunteers who write it self-identify as female
- this extends into the content gap. Assuming one agrees some topics are more likely to be of interest to women than men, those topics are under-developed.
- one such topic is the area of women's biographies. At most, 20% of biographies about Wikipedia are about women
IRL I am an educator and when I teach my students about gender inequality, one of my examples is "who are the famous and powerful people you can think of". Religious figures, historical figures,
politicians - male, male, male. Celebrities are the only exception.
The good news is that we can change this landscape, at least a little bit. This is because, remember, Wikipedia is a website anyone can edit. Meaning we can improve or add new biographical entries about women and women's interests. Editing Wikipedia these days is pretty easy - not more complex than using a text editor or writing a post for Hive :) And there are very friendly support groups, such as "Women in Red" project (red here refers to the "red link", a "missing article" in Wikipeda web of hyperlinks). I think it's a very cool initiative, and there are others with very similar scope (google for "Women Write Wiki" or "WikiProject Women").
So what can you do, exactly? The sky is the limit. You can think of your favorite women heroes and inspiring figures, and see if their article can use a copyedit, or expansion. Go for it - you don't even need an account to edit, although I recommend creating one (just a few seconds, no need to even confirm an email) as it will give you extra tools and protect your privacy. Maybe you know some less famous women who deserve a Wikipedia article but nobody has written about them yet. Try it! A wiki guide to writing your first article is here. Maybe before editing the articles you would like to see what other volunteers in this topic area are chatting about and join the discussions? See WiR "[events]"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Events), "[article alerts]"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Article_alerts) and project discussions.
The last two links I have for you is
- the list of the "did you know" hooks about some of the women whose biographies were created for the WiR project: link to WiR DYK hooks and
- two recent examples of women biographical articles I wrote myself, just to show that yes, I put my money where my mouth is, and I am also writing articles on Wikipedia. Elsie Rosaline Masson and Róża Maria Goździewska. The first one is pretty short, about a century-old Australian scholar and writer, just took me just 30m or so. The second one, about the youngest female nurse in the WWII Warsaw Uprising, took me a few hours but was featured on Wikipedia's main page.
So if you agree with me and think this is cool, how about heading to Wikipedia and making some women-empowering edits? The only downside is, editing Wikipedia is still Web 2.0, and there is no crypto to be gained. But there is plenty of self-satisfaction and the ability to change the world and make it a better place, right there, at our electronic fingertips!