Gender gap/News and Events
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This page gathers several events that take place on or around International Women's Day (8 March) and Women's History Month in March 2024. Our goal for this month is to work together to close the gender gap.
New to editing Wikipedia or experienced, you can make a difference by contributing to knowledge equity on Wikipedia.
The Celebrate Women 2024 conversation hour took place last February 19th, 2024, bringing together wikimedians from across the globe organizing campaigns and events around International Women's Day and Women's History Month. This global campaign run by the Wikimedia movement takes place annually in March. Check the campaign's category on Wikimedia Commons
The very first ever WikiWomen Summit, a multi-day gathering co-designed in feminist solidarity and focused on gender equality, took place during Wikimania Singapore 2023. Its core organizers, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight and Vanj Padilla, welcomed gender organizers and contributors from across the Wikimedia movement. [...] Read the diff.
The SheSaid is a drive run by Wiki In Africa as part of the Wiki Loves Women initiative. The campaign aims to celebrate and recognize women by focusing on enhancing their representation and visibility on Wikiquote. Given to the impact of the #SheSaid campaign on Wikiquote which has been truly remarkable, with over 7,721 new articles created or edited in 11 different languages across the last three editions, the campaign will run for the 4th consecutive year, from 1st October to 31st December 2023.
Link to join
Annual meeting of the FemNetz support network of German-speaking Wikipedia, this time in Stuttgart
The Wiki Loves Women is celebrating Africa’s women throughout March with a Tell Us About Her drive. This is the 4th edition of our drive!
The ISA tool will help you to add better descriptions onto the photographs already uploaded to Wikimedia Commons so that they are more useful on Wikipedia and Wikidata. The category used for this campaign is very simple "Women in Climate» with a level 5 depth.
Campaign link: https://tools.wmflabs.org/isa/campaigns/239
March 2023. For the month of March, a dedicated page was created to feature all activities related to closing the gender gap. Find out more Celebrate Women and its talkpage.
The third edition of the WikiQuote #SheSaid project will take place around Mid October till Mid December. The goal is to add quotes about notable women on Wikiquote. More info: Wiki Loves Women/SheSaid.
Explore gender diversity in a single Wikipedia article
December 2021. An interesting study by the DEI team at the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Link1 (for the announcement) : https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/12/16/understanding-wikimedia-audiences-to-achieve-knowledge-equity/
- Link2 (for the details) : Communications/Research/Diversity, equity, and inclusion research/United States - 2021
It is important to note it is about US audiences.
November 2021. Presentation (in French) of UCoC implementation on the French Wikipedia WikiConvention francophone/2021/Programme/Le Code de conduite universel et la communauté francophone.
October 2021. Launch of the WikiQuote #SheSaid project to add quotes about notable women. Wiki Loves Women/SheSaid.
March 2021. For the month of March, a dedicated page was created to feature all activities related to closing the gender gap. Find out more Gender gap/International Women's Day.
The WMF is giving a free pilot course on harrassement to several wikimedians from different projects (in English) see here 1. Notes on the course in French are available here https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Lutte_contre_le_harc%C3%A8lement/Formations_WMF
Maggie Dennis, who is Vice President of Community Resilience and Sustainability at the Wikimedia Foundation and who oversee the Foundation’s Trust and Safety teams (operations and policy), the Community Development team, and the upcoming Foundation Human Rights lead, published a statement on behalf of the WMF : Community Resilience and Sustainability/2020 December Foundation commitment of support for LGBT+ volunteers.
The UCoC Draft delivered to Board of Trustees for review with links to community comments. Read the draft submitted to the WMF board.
The merger of two Wikimedia gender statistics tools, Wikidata Human Gender Indicators (WHGI) and Denelezh, is underway and is being created under the new name 'humaniki'. Both of these previous projects enabled statistics about the biography gender gap in Wikimedia projects but needed extra work to make those insights actionable for editors. This new WMF-grant-funded project seeks to do that work by participatory co-designing features with the editor community and is recruiting editors to participate in user research. Check out more at their first blog post.
Leila Zei, Head of Research at Wikimedia Foundation has announced the publication of the first draft of the taxonomy of Knowledge Gaps. In response to Wikimedia Movement’s 2030 strategic direction, the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation is developing a framework to understand and measure knowledge gaps. Their goal is to capture the multi-dimensional aspect of knowledge gaps and inform long-term decision making. They invite everyone to review their first draft and to help, have prepared several very helpful documents and a video. Check out more at Research:Knowledge Gaps Index/Taxonomy
In late 2019, the Global Data & Insights team (formerly Learning & Evaluation) collected data from more than 2500 Wikimedians from all over the world through the Community Insights survey. These data help paint a picture of our Movement's demographics and communities' social and technical experiences. They also tell us whether we are progressing towards the Wikimedia Foundation’s Medium Term Plan goals and the 2030 Strategic Direction. Read the Community Insights/Community Insights 2020 Report.
In December 2018, WMNL commissioned a survey among editors of the Dutch language Wikipedia. Topics covered include diversity, working climate, participation in the Strategy 2030. Access the survey report
Do you care for safety and friendliness in the Wikimedia movement? Are you interested in the guidelines and policies that guide it? Do you enjoy helping improvements in these areas? This is your chance to get involved!
The WMF is looking for five or six volunteers to draft the first version of the UCoC, together with four or five Foundation staff members. You'll have to attend several online meetings, read background material and work on shared documents - all will be in English. You can apply on-wiki, or by sending an email.
See the application page for more information.
A LGBTIQ project page has been set up on Meta to track all the different wikimedia initiatives around the Month of pride 2020. Special foculs are made on black LGBTIQ communities. See Wiki Loves Pride/2020.
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A new project page has been set up on Meta following the death of George Floyd ː Black Lives Matter. Katherine Maher and Janeen Uzzel from the Wikimedia Foundation issued a statement on Medium "“The Wikimedia Foundation stands in support of racial justice and with the movement for Black Lives.”.
Maggie Dennis held a video conference (see here on Youtube)about the WMF board resolution related to the Code of Conduct. See announcement and discussion space...
The Project Grant team has approved the WHO community proposal related to Gender Gap :)? Summary of the proposal : Make the next generation of Wikidata diversity statistic tools by merging WHGI and Denelezh.
The WMF Board has just authorised the creation of a UCOC. Specifics include:
- Developing and introducing, in close consultation with volunteer contributor communities, a universal code of conduct that will be a binding minimum set of standards across all Wikimedia projects;
- Taking actions to ban, sanction, or otherwise limit the access of Wikimedia movement participants who do not comply with these policies and the Terms of Use;
- Working with community functionaries to create and refine a retroactive review process for cases brought by involved parties, excluding those cases which pose legal or other severe risks; and
- Significantly increasing support for and collaboration with community functionaries primarily enforcing such compliance in a way that prioritizes the personal safety of these functionaries.
The Project Grant campaign is currently reviewing community proposals. Related to Gender Gap are the following :
The Wiki Loves Women group is celebrating Africa’s women leaders throughout March 2020 with the Tell Us About Her drive on the ISA tool. The drive is aimed at improving the visibility of political leaders and activists across Africa on Wikimedia projects. If you do not know it yet, the ISA tool is a fun and mobile friendly tool that helps you to add better descriptions onto the photographs uploaded to Wikimedia Commons within selected categories, so that they are more useful on Wikipedia and Wikidata. Information added to the image description is structured data (depicts or captions). Categories chosen for this campaign are related to politicians, activists and in particular feminists from Africa. Campaign link: https://tools.wmflabs.org/isa/campaigns/53
Edit-a-thons around the world.
Whose Knowledge? VisibleWikiWomen is launched
Wikimedia Foundation Communication Team launchs WikiHerStory. An initiative to raise awareness of Wikipedia’s gender gap and provide opportunities for anyone to get involved with community projects and events that are helping to address it.
Art and Feminism publishes a resource to support the organization of online events : [1]
Submission of a grant request Grants:Project/Maximilianklein/WHO, Make the next generation of Wikidata diversity statistic tools by merging WHGI and Denelezh.
Interact
The gender gap mailing list is a place to talk about this with other people who are interested and can help. Started on January 31st, 2011, it has a mix of longtime Wikimedians and people from other fields who arrived through their interest in the subject, so it's helpful to introduce yourself in your first post.
In 2020, a Telegram channel is opened to host discussions. It may be joined following that link : https://t.me/joinchat/DS2I3BY-f3dxvUNzNd72kg
Since Gender Gap is a sensitive topic, we please ask to all participants to be considerate and constructive. That means:
- No personal attacks.
- Try to stay on topic.
- Try to turn fighting into constructive discussion, or disengage/take it off.
- Help guide discussion toward concrete action.
- Be aware that using an aggressive or argumentative tone (or even just posting too much) can discourage people from participating.
Old news
2019
- December 2019, the French Wikipedia Community discuss and vote for gender-neutral language w:fr:Wikipédia:Sondage/Écriture inclusive
- June 2019. #19Women in Sport. A Wiki Loves Women drive on Wikipedia to improve the coverage of Africa's sportswomen on Wikimedia projects that took place throughout June. it run across several language Wikipedias (English, French and Swahili), WikiData and Wikimedia Commons. Through the drive people were encouraged to update all the information available on WikiData on Africa’s Sportswomen. Participants were encouraged to upload images, translate existing articles, add WikiData items or create new articles on their favourite female sportswomen. The existing list of sports women that are covered on Wikimedia projects was listed (by country) displaying a variety of information in order to show what was missing.
- March : WikiGap/2019 edit-a-thons around the world
- March : Whose Knowledge? VisibleWikiWomen is launched
2018
- September 2018 : publication of Advancing gender equity: Conversations with movement leaders. Wikimedia Foundation published a report that highlights the experiences of 65 Wikimedians working toward gender equity on Wikimedia projects. It covers motivations, best practices, and challenges.
- Oct-Nov 2018 - #18Women Occupation Drive. Women Occupation Drive was a Wiki Loves Women drive on Wikipedia on WikiData in support of Months of African Cinema (from WikiProject AfroCine). The aim of the Occupations Drive was to help improve the occupation labels in WikiData with non gender-biased description and description in more languages. Pages were established for 12 Africa-based languages.
- March : WikiGap/2018 edit-a-thons around the world
- March : Whose Knowledge? VisibleWikiWomen is launched
2017
- November 2017 - #17African feminists (2017). Following on from the success of The Africa Destubathon in autumn 2016 in which brought over 2000 improvements for Africa, the Women in Red World Contest was held for one month in November 2017. The contest has a focus on creating new biographies of women for every country on the planet and every field of occupation. It is all about diversity of content and widespread coverage and tackling systematic bias. This sub-part of the contest focus more specifically on African feminists and is co-organized by Wiki Loves Women and Les sans pagEs.
- November - Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2017: Stockholm, Sweden
- October - Fossé des genres et harcèlement: le point sur les projets francophones pendant la WikiConvention francophone
- July - WikiWomenCamp 2017, Mexico City, Mexico, July 6th to 8th, 2017
2016
- January: publication of the Harassment Survey 2015 File:Harassment Survey 2015 - Results Report.pdf
- #16WikiWomen Translation Drive (2016). The drive, organized by Wiki Loves Women was for 16 days to make available biographies on 16 notable African women, in at least 16 languages. The articles to be translated were the biographies of African women with the extra drive to translate each article into at least 16 languages.
- Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2016: Washington, DC, United States
- [2] Paris November 2016, Conference on Inclusive language on Wikipedia
2015
- [qui parle de quoi? Conference at the University of Geneva, September 2015]
- #15Challenge Concours d’écriture (2015). As a launching event and to celebrate the 15 years of Wikipedia, a writing contest was organised by Wiki Loves Women starting 15th of January 2016, to end 30th of January. The goal was to write biographies about notable African women.
- Launch of Women and gender diversity on Wikimedia, by the WMF communication team
2014
2013
- November 2013 Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2013: Berlin, Germany
2012
- Wikimedia WikiWomenCamp May 2012 event in Buenos Aires
- NY Wiki Chics, a New York outreach project by Wikimedians