We are all aware of the large reach and popularity of Wikipedia. However, what most people don’t know is that, according to a study conducted in 2011, only 9% of the editors at Wikipedia were women. And the percentage for India is even lower, just 3%.
Wikipedia recognises the systemic gender bias that is created because of factors such as these and thus enables its diverse range of users to edit and create Wikipedia pages, with reliable and authentic sources.
Feminism in India and Punjabi Wikimedians have joined hands for a series of monthly Wikipedia edit-a-thons exploring various facets of gender in India, thus increasing content on women and marginalized communities on Wikipedia as well as training women to create and edit Wikipedia pages and hence increasing the number of women editors. This partnership serves dual purpose, since we not only help reduce the gender gap with each Edit-a-thon, but also edit both in English and Punjabi, hence promoting the use of vernacular languages in India.
In October, we held our first Wikipedia Editathon with Breakthrough India on Indian Women Poets and Authors. And then, in November which is the Pride month in Delhi, we decided to focus on the LGBTQIA+ community, more specifically on LBT women in collaboration with Nazariya, an NGO that works with LBT women, to help us with the research. The topic was Indian Queer Feminists. December 10 being World Human Rights Day, we edited articles on Human Rights Activists in India.
This month, we got together with Punjabi Wikimedians at our New Delhi office to co-host a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Online Social Movements. The edit-a-thon was aimed at creating/editing Wikipedia pages of online social movements in India across issues of caste, gender, sexuality among others who lack representation on the platform currently.
The #WikipediaEditathon is underway at our office! 🙂 Going to be updating Wikipedia about #onlinesocialmovements. Delhi ppl, join us! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/VJROYeGmQ4
— Feminism in India (@FeminismInIndia) February 18, 2017
Accordingly, we created a list of some organisations working on intersectional issues in India and looked at their representation on Wikipedia. A lot of the names of the list did not have any Wiki pages, while the ones which had were underrepresented.
We were a group of 9 participants in total. From discussions about which sources Wikipedia deems acceptable to what are the images that can be used without any special license, we tried to represent the respective organisations as best as possible.
And finally, here is everyone that came today. Thank you all for coming and we hope to see you at our next Editathon! ❤ pic.twitter.com/8EhLVRbSiD
— Feminism in India (@FeminismInIndia) February 18, 2017
Articles
Below is the list of participants and the pages they created/edited.
English
- Japleen: I Will Go Out
- Asmita: Orinam
- Amala: Pinjra Tod
- Kshitij: Gaylaxy Magazine
Punjabi
- Satdeep: Pink Chaddi Campaign
- Jagvir: Pinjra Tod, Varta Gensex
- Simran: I Will Go Out
- Gaurav: Dalit Camera, Asexuality India
- Satnam: Gaylaxy Magazine
Statistics
Articles Created: 10
Articles Edited: 16
Total Edits: 86
Editors: 9
Words Added: 9.15K
Article Views: 82.2K* (as on 15th April, 2017)
For detailed statistics, please click here.
