Wiki Loves Women Sudan
| Ongoing project/Projet en cours. Read in English - Lire en Français |
(will open in october)
Wiki Loves Women in brief
editContext
editGender inequality is rife across Africa. Although much progress has been made to address these inequalities in the workplace and within society, there remains a systemic bias towards profiling women, especially with regards to information, news and knowledge sources, both online and offline.
There are significant numbers of notable women who have shaped the past of African societies, there are innovative African female businesswomen who help to drive Africa’s many economies (formal and informal) and there are everyday realities that women and female children must face due to their gender. These stories need to sit alongside the ones of their male counterparts. Very few of these subjects can be found online, far fewer on the world’s largest knowledge repositories, such as Wikipedia.
Why Wiki Loves Women
editIn ITU’s 2019 report 4.1 billion people (53% of the global population) are online. This means that 3.6 billion people are not connected to the Internet, despite 96% of the global population living within reach of a mobile signal. The majority of these unconnected people live in the least Developed Countries, where 80% of the population is offline. In 2019 Africa’s internet penetration was at 39.3 % (the world’s lowest). In 2020, Internet penetration across southern Africa is at 26.4%.
Internet access for women lags behind men. Overall, 48% of all women use the Internet, compared with 58% of all men. In Africa, the internet penetration rate drops to 33.8% for men and 22.6% for women. The digital gender gap has been widening over recent years. Other research finds that urban poor women are 50% less likely to use the internet than men.
Analysis of these statistics mentioned above indicate the following barriers to Internet use:
- Affordability
- A lack of digital skills
- A lack of meaningful and interesting content (subjects that women are interested in or relate to, e.g. local issues, health,)
- A lack of content that represents their experience (e.g. expert women as thought leaders, stereotypical portrayal, etc.)
- A lack of cultural considerations (local context, stories and languages).
Lack of access to information by women becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. If women do not see themselves represented online with stories that are in their language and relevant to their culture, they are less likely to see themselves as capable of contributing. Further, without inspiring women being showcased on local media, many women will not be inspired to follow similar pathways. Leaving nobody behind is a central precept of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The project
editWiki Loves Women focuses on bridging two significant gaps on Wikimedia projects – women and Africa – both in terms of content about these subjects and in terms of participation by people from these groups.
The project is designed to leverage Wikipedia’s role as a global repository for the dissemination of information to achieve accessible and fair online representation of notable women in countries in Africa. It encourages the contribution of existing researched and verified information by civil society organisations to Wikipedia with the intent of redressing the systemic bias online about women. The donated data and content specifically focuses on women’s contribution to the political, economic, scientific, cultural and heritage landscape, as well as the current socio-political status of women in each country that it is instigated.
Learn More Details about Wiki Loves Women
SheSaid Campaign
The Wiki Loves Women initiative celebrates women leaders with the SheSaid drive. The drive is aimed at improving the visibility of women in creating new or improving already existing Wikiquote entries related to them.
First launched in October 2020, the #SheSaid campaign on Wikiquote has been an amazing success! Across 7 languages, by the 5th January 2021, it resulted overall in 867 new or improved articles (the majority new). Italian Wikiquote was the clear language winner (405 articles) with Ukraine (187) and French (106) coming not so close behind. This is an amazing result - thank you for getting women’s voices heard.
Given its first edition success and noting that there is still a lot to do, the #SheSaid drive will run again end of 2021.
Wiki Loves Women In Sudan
'SheSaid Sudan' As part of the project activities and SheSaid Focus Group A participant from Sudan was selected as individual to Join the project in which she decided to activate the SheSaid chapter in Sudan
This is made through a sport from the Foundation through Individual Rapid Grant 2021 here is the link to the application
Other links and resources
edit- w:en:User:Islahaddow/100WikiDays African Women Challenge
- Mind The (African and Gender) Gaps (written by Anthere, for the Wiki Loves Women website)
- Wiki Loves Women TookKit Event