Proyectos:Proyecto de reducción de brecha de género en Wikipedia/en

Wikipedia Gender Gap Reduction Project

Wikimedia suffers, just like many social and technological projects around the world, of an unacceptable gender gap against women. Only one in ten Wikipedians is a woman.

There are several initiatives to reduce this gap, from international projects like Wiki Women’s (community project led by female Wikipedia contributors worldwide, encouraging others to participate) to WikiWomenCamp (reunion of female Wikipedians and Wikimedians looking to detect common core problems and potential solutions), including international editing contests, editing Wikipedia articles about notable women.

The consequences of the low female participation in Wikimedia has something to do with the type of content being created, there are insufficient articles on women from a diversity of perspectives, of women-related subjects and even articles with sexist biases, reinforcing gender stereotypes. One example, mentioned by former Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner, was the article about Lucienne Day, a British textile and furniture designer who worked in a shared studio with her spouse. She found that the article about Day was not only awfully short, but mentioning her as the wife of... "And she was a tremendous designer, with international awards and worldwide influence! The biased point of view not only affects women, it also worsens the content".

In Mexico we don't have precise data on this problem, but at least we know that none of the 5 top active Wikipedia editors in 2014 are women. Wikimedia Mexico has actively manajde to have in all its public events (talks, workshops, editathons and photo tours) a larger share of female participation, achieving in some cases parity between male and female assistants.

Reasoning

In WikiWomenCamp there was a debate over the potential causes of this problem, and concluded that one of its main sources is a lack of promoting Wikipedia editing, a general lack of knowledge about the existence of the problem and thus an insufficient consideration as a problem. There are also very specific issues that negatively affect female collaboration in the Wikimedia projects: those women who adopt job- and domestic-related work have less free time to make volunteer contributions than men do; overall lower confidence to contribute and defend their points of view; less recognition for the same tasks, and in general the same gender gap that exists in society at large.

some women invest less time than men in massive media usage, social activity and recreational activities; Wikipedia logs a lower time and/or participation share from women. Even though there have been advances towards sharing domestic-related work, there is still the general idea that women should assume all housekeeping activities (in addition to their paid work)
some women have less confidence relating to technological and/or knowledge related projects. Women tend to question themselves— on the originality, pertinence and value of their work—more than men. The same applies to their contributions to Wikipedia— to involve themselves in discussions, defense and argumentation of ideas. Men in general see arguments as a fight of sorts to be won. For contributing women, fights and defenses are not important and many of their pages on the project are erased.
some women prefer to avoid identifying themselves as women because they feel there are different approaches to Wikipedia editors based on their gender, as women's opinions are less valued than men's
the lack of tutoring, mentoring, useful models and support for women (there is a need for training, specific lines of work for written rules, less intimidation and erasure of unreferenced articles)

What is our proposal?

The Gender Gap Reduction Project will have three main foci:

Communication

In order to eliminate the problem of acknowledgement we propose a campaign based on the following rationales: "Tell our history. I edit, therefore I exist" and "Come with us and edit" on social media and printed posters for educational institutions and public spaces. In social media, we will focus on contact with allied groups and specific women, through the network of female allies already actively participating in the project, in order to ensure we can reach the needed audience.

With the above we look forward to growing the number of women who know about the project in Mexico and to communicate socially active women the need to amplify the contributing, documenting and patrolling efforts in Wikipedia.

Education

Workshops and tutoring: At least one bimonthly workshop, exclusively for women, and constant online mentoring.

We propose the following subjects:

Wikipedia
Creative Commons
Digital Safety
Non-sexist language
Audio edition
Video edition
Free Software
Critical/feminist analysis of characters and narratives.

Content

4 editathons on women-related subjects; we propose: Feminicides in Mexico, two for Notable women (Mexican and International women) and Follow-up to Feminism-related subjects.
Participation on the Ibero American article creation contest (March)

How?

Periodic reunions, creating redlink lists for editathons, gathering bibliography and sources
Logistic considerations: Internet access, bibliography, physical space, electric outlets, coffee break, food, shirts, stickers, day care for children.

Participating Organizations

Ímpetu A.C.

Ímpetu A.C.
Luchadoras

Luchadoras
Mujeres Construyendo

Mujeres Construyendo
Social TIC
Wikimedia México A.C.

Allied Spaces

Chronology

January 31 : Feminisms. Workshops on Wikipedia, inclusive language
March: International women, as part of the Ibero American contest. Workshops on Wikipedia and Digital Safety
September: Mexican women. Workshops on Wikipedia and Creative Commons
November: Feminicide in Mexico. Workshops on Wikipedia and Audio/Video editing (if there's enough interest for the second workshop, it will be divided in two sessions so there will always be someone editing Wikipedia)

Participants

The following list is a transclusion of the list in the original Project page. Please add yourself there