From: Laura Hale <laura@fanhistory.com>
Date: Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 01:47
Subject: [Gendergap] Global perspectives on women and Wikimedia projects: Bangladesh
To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects <gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org>
Bangladesh
Bengali Wikimedia projects have very few female contributors. Those that they do have do not contribute on a consistent, regular basis; they edit sporadically. In Bangladesh, women often attend events by the Chapter and others in the country. There are female participants who attend every meet-up. Most of the time, these are new faces and there is a problem in getting the same women to consistently show up to events in order to build up a regular base of active female participants. Currently Wikimedia Bangladesh has no female members in the board. The board is planning to find a woman from the country to be a a Bengali participant in at WikiWomenCamp in Argentina.
In December 2011, there were 1,700 women of all ages from Bangladesh who were interested in Wikipedia on Facebook.[1] 0.06% of all Wikipedia traffic comes from Bangladesh.[2] Most editors in Bangladesh edit the Bengali Wikipedia but 91.1% view English Wikipedia. There are many articles about Bengali actresses on the Bengali Wikipedia. These articles were mostly created by male contributors. There is an effort by a Bengali editor to take the Bengali language article about Angelina Jolie to Featured. As of December 2011, there are zero featured articles about women on Bengali Wikipedia. There are two articles about female sport people: an athlete and a chess player. There are 10 articles about female film actresses from Bangladesh, 10 articles about female television actresses from Bangladesh, 3 articles about female Bangladeshi stage actresses and 13 articles about Bangladeshi singers. On Bengali Wikipedia, there are 4 articles about Bangladeshi social workers, 3 of whom women. The amount of women specific content in Bengali, and Bangaldeshi women content, is limited. The Bengali word for User is gender neutral; the name space does not indicate the gender of the user on Wikimedia projects.
On English Wikipedia, there are 11 articles women in politics, 4 articles about Bangladeshi feminists. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams in this country on English Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams in this country on French Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams in this country on Japanese Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams in this country (he:קטגוריה:קבוצות כדורסל נשים) on Hebrew Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's association football clubs in this country on Farsi Wikipedia (fa:رده:باشگاههای فوتبال زنان بر پایه کشور). There are 0 articles about women's association football clubs in this country on English Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's association football clubs in this country on Russian Wikipedia. Bangladeshi women do not appear to be given much coverage on non-Bengali Wikipedia. This is for several reasons, including a lack of participation of women in certain categories, language issues that make it difficult to report on Bangladeshi women, and a general lack of interest in existing contributors in covering their issues.
In December 2011, according to Alexa, Wikinews was ranked the 17,538th most popular site in the country.[3] On Portuguese Wikinews, there are no women active from this country. This may be a result of several factors, including the language and because Portuguese Wikinews only has an active editing community of five people, one of whom is a woman. A December 2011 search on English Wikinews for Women Bangladesh found 5 articles that mentioned both words.[4] A December 2011 search on Spanish Wikinews for Bangladesh mujeres found 1 article that mentioned both words.[5] A December 2011 search on Portuguese Wikinews for mulheres Bangladesh found 1 articles that mentioned both words.[6]
Bangladeshi women are absent on other projects connected to the Wikimedia Foundation. There is one woman who has contributed to the language incubator who uses Bengali. She made one edit and is the only Bengali speaker to make an edit on incubator. There are no bureaucrats, male or female, from Bangladesh on MediaWiki.Org.[7] In December 2011, according to Alexa, Wikibooks was ranked the 1,653th most popular site in the country.[8] Some of the visitors are likely to be women. Bangladeshi women also do not appear to factor into the WMF's wider strategy to appeal to the region: During the December 2011 fundraising appeal, no Bangladeshis, men or women, were featured are part of the appeal. During the 2011 Summer of Research, the WMF hired eight research fellows. Of these, only one was female, and she was from the United States. There were four males from American universities, The other researchers included men from a Japanese university, a Swiss university and a Canadian university. There were no research fellows, male or female, from this country.
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap