WikiWomen's Collaborative
The WikiWomen's Collaborative is a volunteer-run project and we need your help to inspire, engage and support more women to be involved in the Wikimedia movement.
Be a blogger
Are you passionate about sharing your knowledge of Wikipedia with the world, or do you know women who are? Share your experience, their experiences, your success stories, or stories from the movement with our blog.
Get involved,
share on the blog.
Be a blog coordinator
Blog coordinators recruit bloggers to write for the WikiWomen's blog, help prep their posts for publication, and make sure that we're publishing interesting new stories each week. Coordinators have their pulse on what's happening in the movement, and seek bloggers from around the world to engage and inspire us!
Get involved,
help organize the blog.
Be a Facebook admin
Help make our Facebook page the ultimate social space for WikiWomen around the world. Facebook admins create content, share images, and promote the Facebook page to get more women involved in the conversation!
Get involved,
with Facebook.
Be a translator
Without translators, the Collaborative cannot be a truly international space. Volunteer to translate blogs, Tweets and Facebook posts in any language, and help support women who speak and edit in over 240 languages.
Get involved,
share your language.
- For the 2012 conference, see WikiWomenCamp.
The WikiWomen's Collaborative is a community project created by women around the world who edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and want to encourage others to do the same. Most of Wikipedia's contributors are male - at last count, the Wikimedia Foundation found that only 9% of Wikipedians are women. This gender gap doesn't just affect the community of editors and volunteers, it also impacts the kinds of content that this community makes available in over 240 languages. Inspired by the early women's movement, we hope that by creating dedicated places online to share our projects and support one another, we can engage more women to contribute to Wikipedia.
María Sefidari
is a long-time editor, who has focused primarily on improving the quality and coverage related to LGBT topics, neurobiology, physics, culture and women. She contributes to several language editions of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and deeply believes in the importance of making knowledge available to everyone in the world. She also believes in the importance of encouraging women to contribute to the creation and availability of human knowledge; as Ursula K. LeGuin put it, "[Women] are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains."
María lives in Southern Europe and is a Computer Science Ph.D candidate.
Keilana is an editor dedicated to improving the coverage of women scientists. She helped to start WikiProject Women Scientists and writes other scientific content as well. She wishes there were more women on the project to collaborate with! In real life, she is a student at Loyola University Chicago, studying biophysics and practicing karate.
Netha Hussain is an editor dedicated to improving the participation of women in Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, she writes about healthcare, literature and medical science. She collaborates with various projects that aim at bridging the gender gap in Wikipedia. She has organized and participated in outreach programs for increasing the participation of women in Wikipedia. Outside Wikimedia, she is a full-time medical student and a blogger. She lives in Kozhikode, India.
Heather Walls designed The WikiWomen’s Collaborative logo. The WikiWomen’s Collaborative project supports women’s participation in the Wikimedia movement by celebrating inclusivity and diversity, and this ideal brought some challenges to the design process. The idea for the logo came from a photo taken at the WikiWomen’s lunch at Wikimania in 2012, where over 100 women from around the world gathered. “Looking through our hands creates a sort of window we share,” she said. “The WikiWomen’s Collaborative is about women everywhere contributing to the voice of the world.”
Sarah Stierch is deeply committed to the concept of open culture and free knowledge. She believes that the concept of open culture is imperative to meeting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 27.1: " Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits." On Wikipedia, she writes biographies, about history, art and culture.
Sarah lives in Oakland, California, has her Masters of Arts in museum studies from George Washington University and bachelor's in Native American studies. Her background is in curatorial practice focusing on fine art and history.
Siko Bouterse feels strongly that the sum of all human knowledge should include the perspectives of women, and that's why she is interested in collaborating on creative new projects that aim to impact Wikimedia's gender gap. She believes in the power of personal connection and wants YOU to invite people to join us in contributing to projects like Wikipedia. A global online community geek by day, Siko works at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she connects, mentors, cajoles, supports, and begs people to make amazing things happen that improve the lives of the editing community and those who rely on the content it creates. When she's not working, being a mom, or lazing around at the beach in California, you might find her editing Wikipedia articles on cultural history, the Middle East, or the arts.
Annette Lamb is dedicated to the ideal of open access to information. She teaches, writes, and speaks about libraries, educational technology, teaching, and resources for children and young adults. Lamb has recently returned to the world of Wikipedia where she enjoys working on articles related to history including the history of books, libraries, and the American West.
Annette teaches library science at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, holds a Ph.D in Educational Technology, and lives in beautiful southern Utah. She maintains a free website called eduscapes containing ad-free access to information and courses for teachers and librarians.
Ketaki Pole She is an ambitious, and self motivated Individual. She believes "Sky is the limit and so is the book of knowledge". She has recently started editing and also feels completely addicted to it. She is aware of the huge Gender-gap that prevails in Wikipedia. She is a member of Wikipedia Club Pune. She has participated in outreach events for Wikipedia. She also took part in "Wikipedia takes Pune". She also organized Wiki Women Day which was celebrated on 28th November, 2012 in Pune, India. She loves collaborative Editing. She was also a part of Wikipedia Summit, 2013 that took place in Pune, India. Major focus of summit was "Spoken Wikipedia"
Victoria Edwards is an Army (Royal Canadian Army) brat. She graduated with a Bachelor of Military Arts and Sciences from Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. She completed graduate studies in project management at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She earned a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has published on military history, alternative dispute resolution and public administration. She is currently a civilian employee of the Department of National Defence in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. She has been on Wikipedia for over 6.5 years. She has created over 160 articles in Wikipedia: Canadian Military; Canadian Education; US Education; Canadian Biographies; Military Colleges; Canadian Museums; Religious and Yachting. She and her partner of 20+ years married on July 24, 2005, a few days after same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada.
Patty Mooney Patty Mooney is a television producer, video documentarian, editor, avid mountain biker, blogger and business woman. Her Wikipedia contributions are focused on the topics of video, sports, celebrities and interesting people. She has invented two forms of entertainment: Air Poetry and the Lamp Hat Collection. Her view of life is to share knowledge and a happy attitude with others, and to do what you enjoy, and enjoy what you do. (Patty is in this photo, to the extreme left.)
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Laura Hale is a strong believer in the idea that freely sharing knowledge about women and disability related topics is one of the best ways to highlight and address concerns about these groups. Her efforts in sharing knowledge, mostly about women and disability sport, have taken her around the world to London, Amsterdam, Zaragoza, Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Canberra, Denver, Vail, San Francisco and Buenos Aires. Inside the movement, she was one of backers of the women's only Wikimedia leadership conference, was the vice president of her local chapter, attended the London Paralympics as a member of the press to cover the Games for Wikinews, has created over 350 DYKs and 40 GAs on English Wikipedia of which most are about women or people with disabilities, presented about Wikimedia at two academic conferences, organised several wiki related conferences, had a project she was involved with recognised by Australia's Minister for Sport in Australia's Parliament, and extensively covered women and disability sport on WMF projects. She is currently a PhD student specialising in social media methodologies and sport.
Krutikaa Jawanjal contributes to Wikimedia by planning and organizing Wikimedia events. Also involved with the promoting Wikimedia and creating awareness about Wikimedia and its various activities. A believer of open culture and free knowledge and wants everybody in the world to be fortunate of it. Gender Gap and its effects disturb her. Therefore she wants to be a part of a community which is strongly focused at reducing and erasing it. Also a team member of Barcamp Mumbai(event) which is yet another initiative at promoting free knowledge. From Mumbai, India. First year undergraduate student of Bachelor of Arts with subjects Economics, Psychology and Sociology.
Carla Elizabeth I started out in 2011, and about some days ago I am doing translations in Wikimedia from English to Spanish. I like edit various topics, but my favorites are Fashion designers, health, computer viruses and cars, but anyway, I feel comfortable editing any topic, do not choose only it which are favorites, about where I live, I am living at end of the world in a country named Chile. I also look for categories to uncategorized files on Wikimedia Commons, if you want contact me you can do it via IRC freenode (/query Carly), I am a PDPC supporter and an unofficial helper of the freenode network.
Maia Weinstock strives to improve female representation on Wikipedia. In particular, she focuses her efforts on adding to and expanding articles on women in the STEM fields. Maia also aims to help close the Wikipedia gender gap. She is an active member of the Boston-area Wikipedia community, where she has organized edit-a-thons for Ada Lovelace Day and for Women's History Month. She is also a contributor to the Women Scientists and History of Science WikiProjects.
Maia is an editor and writer specializing in science and children’s media. She holds a degree in Human Biology from Brown University and lives in Cambridge, MA.
Meghan Ferriter is endlessly fascinated by the ways we communicate, learn, and collaborate--and where these practices break down--online and IRL. She believes sharing and building knowledge openly can help address systematic inequalities and change relationships of power. Meghan completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Glasgow in 2011. She continues to refine skills and build upon her Wikipedia activities, often editing and linking articles and helping where needed - hoping to bolster webs of knowledge. When she is not encouraging new users to join the Wikipedia movement, Meghan uses interdisciplinary approaches to understand social identities, processes of cultural change, and sport, fans, and popular culture online and offline; as well as digital humanities and GLAM Wiki. Get in touch on her main talk page.
Mayo Fuster Morell - Lilaroja is a member of the Research Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation, has researched extensible Wikimedia, and is member of Amical Wikipedia. In her research, she has analyzed the role of the Wikimedia Foundation in the governance of Wikimedia ecosystem. She has also developed sentiment analysis in Wikipedia to investigate if women and men experience differently their interaction on the wikis, and if differences in sentiments might contribute to explain the gender gap. Mayo has also created a wiki resource focis on analyzing the gender gap at conferences related to Internet and Society topics, and systematizing resources to fight gender gap.
Rohini Lakshané Long-time Wikimedian. Former chairperson of Gender gap at Wikimedia Chapter India (2013-14). Former Wikipedian-in-Residence (pilot project), Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and Wikimedia Chapter India (2013).
Ankita Shukla is a Computer Science and Engineering B.Tech undergraduate student pursuing senior year at Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. She is a student developer and has been associated with Wikimedia since 2014. Ankita is enthusiastic about having new people join the wikimedia community and is ever ready to support the volunteers. :) She is deeply committed to the concept of open culture and free knowledge.
Andrea P- Kleiman is from Argentina. She is a painter and a psychologist. She mostly edits in Wikipedia in Spanish but also contributes to it.Wikipedia, en.Wikipedia, Commons Wikimedia, es.Wikisource, es.Wikiquote, es.Wiktionary, fr.Wikipedia, pt.Wikipedia and Wiki Data. She is a member of Wikimedia España, Wikimedia Uruguay and a Board Member of Wikimedia Argentina. She is involved in the Working Group of Harassment and Community Health. She is very interested in reducing open sexism or misogyny and engaging women to narrow the gender gap in Wikipedia. She is interested in sharing experiences and opinions with others working for reducing the gender gap in Wikipedia. She has finally embodied her ideas in the creation of Wikiproyecto:Mujeres. She is convinced that it is of vital importance that women have a support network. Her intention is to grow a meeting place for female editors to strengthen their ties and sense of belonging and community identity. You can find her here.