dna, 9 August 2013 link
Only about a tenth of Wikipedia's contributors are female. Here's what the Wikimedian community and the Wikimedia Foundation are doing to bridge the Gender Gap.
By Netha Hussian, a Wikimedian from Kozhikode, India.
It really upset me when I figured out that only around 9 percent of all the contributors to Wikipedia are women. I knew that very few women contribute to Wikipedia, but I hadn't expected the figure to be as low as 9 percent.
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The Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia, had recognized this problem sooner than I did. The Wikimedia Foundation has launched various programmes to bridge the Gender Gap. The latest addition to the list is the WikiWomen's Collaborative.
The WikiWomen's Collaborative was created in September 2012 by women around the world who edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and want to encourage others to do the same. The project was aimed at helping women and transwomen support each another and engage in programmes that help the Wikimedian community bring in new women editors. A variety of events such as edit-a-thons, interviews, and Wikiwomen parties were conducted as a part of the Collaborative's activities.
In May 2012, a WikiWomenCamp was organised for women in the Wikimedia movement to come together and discuss with like-minded women various issues related to women in the Wikimedia community. Over 20 women from different countries participated in the camp to brainstorm solutions for existing problems that concern women, and suggest future plans to collaborate with one another. It is customary to conduct a WikiWomen's luncheon at Wikimania, the global gathering of Wikimedians, exclusively for the women participants.
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The Wikimedia Foundation has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015. Given the good response from the community to various events conducted for women, it is likely that the Foundation will achieve its goal within the set time limit.