PhilWiki Community/WikiGap Philippines 2023

WikiGap Campaign in the Philippines is a community outreach initiated by PhilWiki Community during the celebration of international women's month and beyond. This year, WikiGap Campaign runs from March 8 to May 8 with the aim to bring about a more gender-equal internet – and a more gender-equal world. In a period of two (2) months, online and offline activities will be conducted focusing on building knowledge about women and related topics.

Since 2019 during the international women's month celebration, the Philippine Wikimedia Community has been organizing WikiGap Campaign in the Philippines to add more content to Wikipedia about women figures, experts and role models in various fields. The event continue during the year in several cities around the world run by the local Wikimedia affiliates. Find out more about WikiGap on: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiGap.

The #WikiGap campaign is a partnership between Wikimedia affiliates and The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and invites broad and diverse participation, and allows for local adaptations to the overall theme of closing the gender gap and other gaps relevant for diversity on Wikipedia.

Background

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopedia. However, the information about women is less extensive than that of men because 90% of its contributors are men.

In March 2017, a sister edit-a-thon in four languages between the Swedish embassy in New Delhi and Stockholm was organized for International Women's day. The Swedish embassies in Pretoria and Washington DC then followed and hosted Wikipedia edit-a-thons with Wikimedia chapters.

Since then, the ministry has developed a tool kit for how embassies should organize Wikipedia edit-a-thons, and they are committed to surfacing the achievements of women in the world’s largest encyclopedia, in partnership with Wikimedia affiliates and other local organizations.

In the Philippines, PhilWiki Community joined the global campaign in 2019 wherein the participants focused on creating new articles on LGBTQ and Women related topics thru Translation. As a result, two Community members have made it to the top contributors, internationally.

In 2020, five participants improved at least 30 articles each during the campaign launch and they actively worked to improve the visibility of women in seven Philippine languages namely: Bikol, Cebuano, Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, and Waray.

In 2021, in partnership with Developh Community, PhilWiki Community had a 1-hour WikiGap: Closing the Digital Gender Gap discussion via livestream to launch WikiGap in the Philippines. The organization introduced its activities and answered relevant issues related to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement.

Together, we want to bring a more gender-equal internet – and a more gender-equal world.

WikiGap Campaign 2023 kick-off

WikiGap Philippines 2023 launching at Pili Park Bistro in Naga City