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 monthly Wikipedia edit-a-thons with different organisations 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.
To commemorate the Women’s World Boxing Championship 2018, FII dedicated November 2018’s Wikipedia Editathon to Indian Women Boxers. The editathon was organised at 91springboard’s Nehru Place office to increase the representation of the women boxers who are currently playing at the Women’s World Boxing Championship as well as to teach a new skill of creating and editing articles on Wikipedia to the youth.
Today was Wikipedia Saturday at FII, where we edited Wikipedia pages of Indian #womenboxers who are currently playing at the 2018 Women’s World Boxing Championship in #NewDelhi. We created & edited 12 pages today.
Join us next time?#WWCHs2018 #FIIWikiProject #AIBA#WCHs2018 pic.twitter.com/ifOKMiRjIn
— Feminism in India (@FeminismInIndia) November 17, 2018
Accordingly, we created a list of women boxers at the Women’s World Boxing Championship 2018 and looked at their representation on Wikipedia. A lot of the names on the list did not have any Wikipedia pages, while the ones which did, had very basic and limited information (stub pages).
We were a group of 5 editors in total. The event began with a discussion on the whys and hows of Wikipedia editing for new-comers.
After that, each participant chose one or more woman athlete absent from Wikipedia, and started digging through the internet looking for interviews, news reports and e-books that mentioned their chosen athlete to write comprehensive Wikipedia articles on them.
By the end of the day, the participants had created 3 articles and edited 12 articles in English and Hindi. See additional statistics here.
Some journalists from the Outlook Magazine came to cover our event and they wrote a short report and created this wonderful video story about the Indian women boxers editathon.
