Where are all the Women in Wikipedia?

Wikipedia logo assembled piece by piece created by Giulia Forsythe.
Wikipedia. Created by giulia.forsythe

How many times did you consult Wikipedia in the last month, week or even today? Once, twice maybe more? Perhaps you saw that Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka recently won the 2021 Australian Open, googled her and stumbled across her Wikipedia page only to realize that hours later you were stuck in a Wiki rabbit hole learning about the “first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion”, the phenakistiscope. For whatever the reason, the English Wikipedia, and its over 6 million articles, is a gold mine of information, but not for all topics.  

The Gender Gap

There is a severe Gender Bias in Wikipedia, which manifests itself in multiple forms: most contributors are men, most biographies are about men, concepts that are of interest to women have less coverage, and articles written by women or about women are consistently questioned over those articles written by men or about men. Wikipedia has a Gender Bias toward Women. Despite these gaps, however, there are numerous projects that are working to help address them and offer more diverse coverage of subjects on and about Women.  

Female symbol. Created by Gustavb

Women in Red WikiProject 

The WikiProject, Women in Red, seeks to increase the number of biographies on Women in Wikipedia by transforming red links (links without a Wikipedia article) into blue links (links with a Wikipedia article.). Additionally, Women in Red seeks to increase the visibility of Women by adding Creative Commons licenses photographs to Wikimedia Commons that can then be used in Wikipedia articles or outside of the Wikimedia projects.  

Women WikiProject 

The Women WikiProject group’s goal is to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of subjects pertaining to women and invites contributions from people of all gender identities, sexual orientations, geographic locations and backgrounds to participate.  

Art+Feminism 

Art+Feminism is an international community that “strives to close the information gap about gender, feminism, and the arts on the internet.” The community is responsible for many edit-a-thons focused on closing these gaps in Wikipedia.    

Les Sans PagEs 

Et en français there is the Les sans PagEs group, that is dedicated to turning red (dead) links into blue (functional) links in pages about women, feminism, and other underrepresented subjects . The Les sans PagEs group intersects with the Women in Red WikiProject and the Art+Feminism group by expanding the work on the Francophone Wikipedia.  

How you can contribute! 

Contributing to Wikipedia is open to all! You do not have to be anybody special to correct, change or create entries in Wikipedia.  There are many ways to contribute: 

  1. Adding references (citations) to existing Wikipedia articles 
  1. Correcting punctuation in existing Wikipedia articles 
  1. Expanding and adding content (sections, paragraphs, etc.) to existing Wikipedia articles 
  1. Translating existing Wikipedia articles into other languages 
  1. Illustrating Wikipedia articles with Creative Commons licensed images 
  1. Creating a new Wikipedia article from the scratch 

Interested in learning how to contribute? Join me for an introductory workshop on contributing to Wikipedia on Tuesday 9 March 2021 from 12:00 to 13:00Registration required. The workshop will be given via the Zoom platform and will focus on contributing to the English-language Wikipedia. 

Can’t make it to the workshop? Wikipedia has numerous resources that can help you self-teach on how to contribute.  

For more information contact hssl.library@mcgill.ca.  

International Women’s Day

In celebration of International Women’s Day, McGill Library has curated a diverse, intersectional book display of works by and about those who identify as women.

The display features contemporary works by noted feminist scholars, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Roxanne Gay, Audre Lorde, and Rebecca Solnit. These works touch on important topics in our current #MeToo era, such as the gender binary, the representation of Black women in art, identity politics, and speaking truth to power. If that’s your cup of tea, then be sure to check out Why I march: Images from the Women’s March around the world.

Following the recent Academy Award wins by Ruth E. Carter for Best Costume Design and Hannah Beachler for Best Production Design (both for Black Panther), the display also focuses on the role of women filmmakers throughout the world. Italian women filmmakers and the gendered screen features essays and interviews with acclaimed Italian women directors on their contribution to film. Latin American women filmmakers: Production, politics, poetics contains scholars providing in-depth analysis on the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Warriors, witches, whores: Women in Israeli cinema provides a feminist study of the Israeli film industry.

Given McGill Library’s robust collection of graphic novels, the book display features the work of women graphic novelists, cartoonists, and anime artists. Pretty in ink: North American women cartoonists, 1896-2013 is a comprehensive volume of works that range from a Holocaust survivor penning action/adventure comics to the First Nations army corporal behind the series G.I. Gertie. Black women in sequence: Re-inking comics, graphic novels, and anime covers everything from African goddesses to postracialism in comic books. We have also chosen to highlight the work of contemporary graphic novelists, such as Montreal native Julie Delporte’s latest Moi aussi je voulais l’emporter, a feminist autobiography.

International Women's Day

In light of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, the display contains important works by Indigenous authors: Kim Anderson’s book A recognition of being: Reconstructing Native womanhood; Mary Jane Logan McCallum’s Indigenous women, work, and history, 1940-1980; and Mothers of the Nations: Indigenous mothering as global resistance, reclaiming and recovery, edited by D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Kim Anderson.

Take a moment to check out the wide variety of titles on display. From Single girl problems: Why being single isn’t a problem to be solved, to Feminist visions and queer futures in postcolonial drama, McGill Library has all your intersectional feminist reading needs covered.