Hi everyone,
To respond to the gender gap and create opportunities to strengthen the
gender diverse content on Wikipedia, the Gender Organizing community in the
Wikimedia Movement hosts an annual campaign
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celebrate_Women> during International
Women’s Month. This campaign is an important opportunity for the Wikimedia
movement to engage with the work of different communities highlighting the
gender gap in each Wikimedia project.
On 16 February 2023, the Campaigns Programs team held an office hour with
Gender Organizers from across the movement. Some key highlights from the
discussion included:
-
An overview of the volunteer-led Central Notice banner for this year’s
International Women’s Day campaign, with a request for translation support
for the banner and feedback.
-
An overview of the new event registration tool to support gender
organizers with an improved user-experience for newcomers joining events.
-
An overview of community planned campaign events surrounding gender on
the Projects for this year’s campaign.
Participants to the event also highlighted a desire for more strategic
support in:
-
Ensuring an intersectional approach to gender content on the Projects,
including facilitating gender visibility on key content areas such as
climate and sustainability, and elevating LGBTIQ+ content to ensure that
gender campaigning was inclusive, reflexive and expansive.
-
Facilitating and coordinating ongoing gender campaigning on Wikipedia,
and other projects (like WikiData), to ensure lively and ongoing content
curation in this important area beyond Women’s History Month (March).
-
Bringing in strategic partnerships at an international, regional and
local level to support and amplify gender campaigns on the projects e.g. a
similar partnership to the UNHRC and #Wiki4HumanRights.
Specific Product Support requested by gender organizers in the office hour
included:
-
A request for an on-Wiki calendar of events that allowed participants to
view and plan their contributions more systematically.
-
A request to review the Women in Red redlists
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Redlist_index>,
which are updated by Listeria Query service, but are not updating often any
more. This is an issue connected to ongoing maintenance of key
volunteer-built listbuilding tools.
You can learn more about the discussion by watching the recording here.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Women_History_Month_Conversation>
What happens Next?
As an immediate priority, there is a request for support with translating
the Central Notice <https://w.wiki/6NPg>banner, and adding planned campaign
events to the Event landing page.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celebrate_Women> There is also a request
for support for updating translations of the event page itself.
During March, there is also an opportunity to share your events with the
WMF for amplification with the movement and external audiences via social
media. Have an event you’d like to share or have profiled? Get in touch
with the Campaigns team <campaigns(a)wikimedia.org>for more information.
On 15 March 2023, you are also invited to join the Wikimedia Research
Showcase, <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase> which
will be focused on gender and equity on Wikipedia. The session will feature
research presentations by Sneh Gupta, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha
University, and Jiao Sun, University of Southern California. You can join
the livestream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw4MzJgDIzo> and ask
questions in the chat..
Lastly, look out for future announcements for how we plan to address the
identified gaps and opportunities elevated in the Office Hour.
*Masana Mulaudzi (She/Her)*
Senior Manager, Campaigns Programs
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>