TOnche Wikipedia has a gender gap problem. In whatever language you read, in the online encyclopedia, despite its breadth, there are no pages dedicated to female figures. The good news, however, is that someone is trying to resolve the issue.
There is a lack of women in open content
This is the goal of Camelia Boban, founder and president of WikiWomen in Italian language. It is an association whose main activity is to decrease the gender gap in the Wiki world.
WikiDonne, the rediscovery of female biographies
The association was born on 4 August 2016 when the group decides to participate in the editat-a-thon (a writing marathon) Her Story organized by United Nations And dedicated to female figures and the representation of diversity.
The aim was to involve more women in writing content on Wikipedia and, specifically, in the preparation of biographies of female writers.
At the end of this experience, WkiDonne decides to constitute itself as a usergroup, to obtain an official recognition by joining Wikimedia.
In almost 6 years since its founding, the editors have grown to 700. They have created almost 3200 entries and edited over 9500.
What exactly does it do
WikiWomen it makes the world feminine and, in general, all of them underrepresented minorities, more visible on Wikipedia. S.writes female biographiesgiven that, in the Italian language encyclopedia, 86% of those present are male, against only 14 (after their intervention they became 16 per cent).
Not that it is better in the rest of the world: on Wikipedia in English, the largest of all, in 2016 they were 15% and now they are around 19%.
But WikiWomen it also corrects entries containing gender biasand those biographies that summarize life in the opening words with the expressions “wives of” or “daughters of”.
WikiWomen, not just for women
In almost six years since its foundation, 700 editors have gradually joined the group. These they created nearly 3200 voices and edited over 9500.
Wikimedia projects are diverse and are not just about the encyclopedia. In all cases, however, the primary objective is always the same: to deal with diversity in its entirety.
And therefore, if at the origin the attention was all focused on women, over time the comparison of many different heads has centered the focus on marginalized groupsfrom the LGBTQ + community to migrants, to any other condition of minority, or identified as such. After all, diversity has no gender, no age.
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