User:BhuvanaMeenakshi(CIS-A2K)/ImpactReport2020
Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science edit
What
This Wikiorientation session was attended by 350 students from Arts and Science department of Dr.GR Damodharan College of Science where they were introduced to different Wikimedia projects. The 50% of female participants actively took part in the discussions and also they were taken through the Wiki projects focused for women viz., Women in Red Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. This session was part of "Hour of Code", an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. The main objective of the session was to make the students aware about the areas of Wiki they can work on and also to gather feedback on the Gender Gap research which is currently in progress.
When
6-7 December 2019
Where
The session happened at Dr.GR Damodharan College of Science, Coimbatore
How
A day-long briefing about the Wikimedia projects was discussed followed by an awareness session on the "Bridging Gender Gap" research was presented. Feedback on the same was also collected from the students who participated.
Impact made
The key issues of women working on the technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case) were discussed and it was found that almost 60% of the students were interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.
"Bhuvana, you have motivated and encouraged students to contribute to society through Wikimedia, the knowledge sharing platform. You also gave insights on opportunities in Wikimedia community and the efforts Wikimedia is taking to bridge the gender gap. This was very informative and an eye-opener session. Many female students have registered themselves in Wikimedia. We thank for your presence in our campus and delivering such a thought provoking session."-Dr.G.Radhamani, Director
Learning:
The observations made from the session was that a necessity to build guidelines for initiating a Wikiclub was figured out.
Links
Press coverage about the event can be seen at Desathin Nambikai, The Covai mail news, Prime Time Tamil, Covai news and Updatenews360.com
Indian Women in Science Edit-a-thon edit
What
The event focused on creating articles on Indian Women who have contributed to the field of Science. It was the fourth iteration of the edit-a-thon where articles on Wikipedia in English and other languages has been created. New learners also actively took part and contributed to this event. There were 11 participants who represented 4 different languages and they attended the event both by means of online and offline. Additionally, there were few content contributions on Wikidata too.
The event was mainly focussed on bridging the content/data gap on women in science.
When
31 August 2019
Where
The event was held at JNCASR, Bangalore with the collaboration of CIS-A2K and Indianbioscience.
How
There were two lightning talks about the lower representation of the content on women scientists on Wiki and a basic training session on developing content for Wikidata was also conducted. The event page can be seen here.
Impact made
Articles created/improved:
Learning
- As this forum has many researchers and scientists present in various field works, more edit-a-thons focussed on female researchers and scientists are to be conducted in association with the institution.
Bridging the Gender Gap in Indian language Wikimedia Communities edit
The main objective of this research was to understand the prevalence of a gender-based gap/bias in participation and content creation in Indian language Wikimedia communities. The study focussed on three thematic areas, namely the engagement of women in online and offline spaces in differnt ways, challenges which contribute to a gap in the content created by/about women on Wikimedia projects, and strategies for sustained participation. As part of this study, 15 interviews were conducted with women Wikimedia contributors from 11 different Indian languages. 2 Focussed Group Discussions(FGDs) were also conducted with women participants at Wikipedia community events. The process involved discussions on nature of contributions, understanding of gender gap and bias, safe spaces, accessibility, sustainable participation and community health. The observations from these discussions offered several learnings on policies and strategies for engagement in online and offline participation by women, need for training awareness and outreach and the need for visibility and recognition of work done by women on Wikimedia.