2025:Program/Wikiesfera, 10 years of a unique feminist community in the Wikimedia Movement

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Session title: Wikiesfera, 10 years of a unique feminist community in the Wikimedia Movement

Session type: Poster

Track: Community Health

Language: en

For the past ten years, Wikiesfera has been rewriting history to ensure that women occupy the space they deserve on Wikipedia. With a majority-female community, we have worked to close the gender gap through a feminist, participatory, and innovative governance model, fostering collective decision-making and inclusivity. In this decade, we have organized 160 activities, created or improved over 3,000 articles, engaged more than 2,500 participants, and collaborated with over 60 experts. Our impact has extended beyond Wikipedia, with coverage in more than 350 national and international media outlets, including The Guardian, and recognition such as the Lovie Award. Our vision is to build a feminist community committed to social justice, challenging systemic biases in knowledge spaces like Wikipedia. We will reflect on our achievements, share insights from our governance model, and explore how our work can continue to drive meaningful change in Wikimedia and beyond.

Description

For the past ten years, Wikiesfera has been rewriting history to ensure that women occupy the space they deserve on Wikipedia. Our work has focused on closing the gender gap through a feminist, inclusive, and participatory model, engaging a majority-female community and fostering collective decision-making. Through our innovative governance structure, we have built a space where collaboration prevails over competition, and where knowledge production is approached with a commitment to social justice and the elimination of systemic biases. Over the past decade, Wikiesfera has grown into a recognized and influential project, both within and beyond the Wikimedia movement. We have organized 160 activities, contributed to the creation or improvement of over 3,000 articles, and involved more than 2,500 participants, many of whom had never edited Wikipedia before. Additionally, we have collaborated with over 60 experts from diverse fields, ensuring that our content meets the highest standards of accuracy and reliability. Our work has also received widespread recognition, with coverage in more than 350 national and international media outlets, including The Guardian, and distinctions such as the Lovie Award. Furthermore, our commitment to inclusive governance has led us to establish a Council of Wise Women, composed of experienced Wikipedia editors and active members of our community. This council, alongside our steering group, plays a crucial role in strategic planning, decision-making, and ensuring transparency in our operations. A key aspect of our impact has been building alliances with cultural and academic institutions, working together to reduce the gender gap in knowledge representation. Our approach not only focuses on increasing the number of women’s biographies on Wikipedia but also empowering women as active contributors, ensuring they have the skills, support, and confidence to participate in knowledge production. As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, this session will serve as a moment of reflection and projection for the future. We will share key lessons learned from our decade of work, the challenges we have faced in sustaining a feminist, community-driven governance model, and the strategies we have used to foster engagement in an often male-dominated digital space. We will also explore how our model of non-competitive, participatory engagement can inspire other Wikimedia communities to rethink governance, participation, and inclusivity. By challenging traditional structures and centering feminist principles, Wikiesfera offers a unique blueprint for building more diverse, equitable, and collaborative knowledge ecosystems. Looking ahead, we aim to expand our impact, strengthen our alliances, and continue innovating in ways that ensure women’s knowledge and perspectives are fully integrated into Wikipedia and other digital knowledge platforms.

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

For the past ten years, Wikiesfera has been rewriting history to ensure that women occupy the space they deserve on Wikipedia, aligning directly with Wikimania@20’s themes of Inclusivity, Impact, and Sustainability. As a majority-female community, we have developed a feminist and participatory governance model that prioritizes collective decision-making, transparency, and the elimination of systemic biases. As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, this session will share key insights from our model, demonstrating how rethinking governance, centering marginalized voices, and fostering long-term participation can help shape a more inclusive and equitable Wikimedia movement.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Speakers

• Zapipedia

I became a Wikipedia editor in June 2019. Since then, I’ve been contributing to the Spanish and Asturian Wikipedias, as well as Wikidata, with a strong focus on bridging the gender gap. I’m also a mentor and tutor on Spanish Wikipedia (eswiki), helping newcomers become confident contributors.

As an organizer and core team member of Wikiesfera, I coordinate edit-a-thons and training sessions aimed at enhancing representation and participation. I’ve led various activities and taken part in several community events. Since the end of 2021, I’ve also been collaborating as a Product Ambassador for the Wikimedia Foundation, supporting Spanish-speaking communities and working with development teams to promote tools and strategies that make Wikipedia more inclusive, diverse, and user-friendly.

• PatriHorrillo

I am Patricia Horrillo, a journalist specialized in communication and social media. Since 2015, I have been coordinating Wikiesfera (UG), a working group established at Medialab-Prado (Madrid, Spain), where I assist more individuals in learning how to edit on Wikipedia and in gaining a deeper understanding of other projects within the Wikimedia universe. I am concerned about the existing knowledge gaps on Wikipedia: gender (on which I gave a TEDx talk titled "Nobody will talk about us (women) if we are not in Wikipedia"), as well as historically invisible minorities (LGBT community, Romani people, etc.) and everything related to the historical memory of Spain. To address these deficiencies, I organize thematic editatonas aimed at attracting new editors to the free encyclopedia. I was also a co-founder of 15Mpedia.org along with other Wikipedians and activists to document the 15-M Movement in a distributed manner.