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 conducts regular Wikipedia edit-a-thons with different partners 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 month we held an edit-a-thon on Indian Women In Sports: Wikipedia Edita-a-thon at our New Delhi office. The edit-a-thon was aimed at creating/editing Wikipedia pages of Indian women in sports who lack representation on the platform currently.
Accordingly, we created a list of Indian women in sports and looked at their representation on Wikipedia. Most of the names had a page on Wikipedia, but with very basic and limited information (stub pages).
We were a group of 6 participants in total. The event began with a discussion on the whys and hows of Wikipedia editing for new-comers.
It’s #WikipediaEditathon day at our office & today we are editing articles on #IndianWomenInSports to reduce the #gendergap on #Wikipedia. pic.twitter.com/EiaOKuhaGe
— Feminism in India (@FeminismInIndia) May 13, 2017
After that, each participant chose one or more Indian sports woman absent from Wikipedia, and started digging through the internet looking for interviews, news reports and e-books that mentioned their chosen sportswomen to write comprehensive Wikipedia articles on them.
By the end of the day, the participants had edited a total of about 11 Wikipedia pages in English.
Articles
- Manpreet Kaur: Japleen
2. Anisa Sayyed: Megha
3. Anaka Alankamony: Asmita - Shivani Kataria: Japleen
- Anuradha Thokchom: Megha
- Asha Roy: Shagun
- Ayonika Paul: Ankita
- Nikki Pradhan: Shagun
- Savita Punia: Ankita
- Poulomi Ghatak: Shriya
11. Jhulan Goswami: Shriya
Additional statistics can be viewed on the P&E Dashboard here.
