2019:Diversity/Experience makes the difference in improving gender equality in Wikipedia
This is an Accepted submission for the Diversity space at Wikimania 2019. |
Title
[edit | edit source]Experience makes the difference in improving gender equality in Wikipedia.
- We’ll examine the opportunities to gain even greater visibility and commitment in the international campaign WikiGap by learning from previous participants experiences.
Description
[edit | edit source]The WikiGap campaign’s intention is to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia and hopefully make more women interested in editing encyclopedic articles. By highlighting prominent women in Wikipedia, the possibilities for an increased gender aware society in general are also improved.
The guiding question for the workshop is “How do we get an increased commitment during WikiGap based on the experiences we gained when we worked with the campaign in 2018 and 2019?”
The structure of the workshop will look like this:
- Part one.
An initial presentation of WikiGap, will be held by Lina Eidmark from Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and John Andersson representing Wikimedia Sverige. Lina and John will also clarify and highlight the connection between the Sustainable development goals and WikiGap.
- Part two
Two or more organizers of a WikiGap event, and perhaps one of the participants from the WikiGap Challenge, will share their experience from the campaign and eventually the Challenge.
- Part three.
We will collect the experiences from the whole assembly of how it was to organize WikiGap events and how they think they could have succeed even better. They will work with the following questions in groups:
- Please identify and present: What are the most important success factors and challenges that you experienced during 2018 and 2019? Why where they success or challenges?
- Do you think it would be a good idea expanding the campaign to include groups other than women to increase their visibility on Wikipedia? Please motivate your answer.
- Do you believe that the online contest, the WikiGap Challenge, was a good way to increase the interest and get an enduring commitment in the campaign? Why? Do you have any other suggestion?
The last part of the workshop will include a presentation made by the group members and a final summary about suggestions and experiences, led by Lina and John.
Relationship to the theme
[edit | edit source]This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:
By involving a number of different actors from different groups in society in the work with increased gender equality on Wikipedia by the international campaign WikiGap and thus our workshop, we hope for the following results: Improved gender equality by increasing the visibility around women and what women achieve and have accomplished (SDG 5), more possibilities for the ones, which, for various reasons, is more dependent on others to have access to free knowledge, to gain better knowledge about what women have achieved through history (SDG 4) and increased forms of collaboration between groups in society and international actors (17). We also believe that an increased focus on gender issues eventually will lead to reduced gaps between, for example, different countries (10), reduced poverty and hunger (1 and 2), as well as strong and stable institutions with which both men and women are represented (16).
Session outcomes
[edit | edit source]At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:
The purpose of the workshop is to gather experiences and thoughts from participants/organizers of WikiGap events and use them when to develop the concept of WikiGap in the future. This is important because it will make it possible to work more efficient with gender equality and equality issues internationally within the Wikimedia movement and at Wikipedia.
Session leader(s)
[edit | edit source]- Lina Eidmark, Communication Strategist at Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs
- John Andersson, Executive Director at Wikimedia Sverige
Usernames
[edit | edit source]- Wikimedia username 1
- John Andersson (WMSE)
- Claudia.Garad (WMAT)
- Felix Nartey, User:Flixtey
Affiliation/country
[edit | edit source]- Wikimedia Österreich
- Wikimedia Sverige
- Wikimedia User Group Uganda
E-mail contact
[edit | edit source]- lina.eidmark@gov.se
- john.andersson@wikimedia.se
Session type
[edit | edit source]Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design priorities submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:
- Workshop to identify and try to solve problem
- Other: Our thought is to have an workshop where we, by sharing and listen to different experiences from WikiGap, solves problems but also tries to develop WikiGap to get it even better.
Length of session
[edit | edit source]60 minutes
Supporting work
[edit | edit source]Optional:
WikiGap 2019 at Meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiGap
WikiGap Challenge https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiGap_Challenge
WikiGap toolkit http://www.swemfa.se/wikigap/
The WikiGap video https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiGap_20180413_CreativeCommons-BYSA.webm
Requirements
[edit | edit source]The session will work best with these conditions:
- Room:
A classroom with a projector + screen
- Audience:
We think it will be between 30-60 persons that have been involved in one or more WikiGap events.
- Recording:
It could be recorded, especially some parts. If it is ok with the participants.