Project Pink Blue Hosts Wiki Loves Women In Abuja
Lagos, Nigeria, 28th September 2016 – Project Pink Blue and Wikimedia UG Nigeria, in partnership with WikiAfrica, and the Goethe-Institut will be co-hosting a 2-day workshop Wiki Loves Women in Abuja, Nigeria. The 2-day workshop will teach up to 20 women in Abuja how they can create contents on Wikipedia and increase visibility for activities of women in Nigeria.
Gender inequality is rife in many parts Africa. Over the years, many strides have been taken to address inequalities in the workplace and within society. However, particularly online there remains systematic bias that disadvantages women by only profiling men, especially with regards to information, news and knowledge.
There is acknowledged systemic bias on Wikipedia relating to content generated by and relating to Women and Africa. This can be seen in the following statistics:
On Wikipedia Internationally
- Less than 20% of (all) Wikipedia contributors are female
- Only 16% of the biographies on the English Wikipedia are about women
- In the English Wikipedia an article about a notable person that mentions that the person is divorced is 4.4 times more likely to be about a woman rather than a man.
The Gender Gap in Africa on Wikipedia
- Only 25% of edits to subjects about the Sub-Saharan region come from within that region.
- Only 12% of biographies in sub-saharan Africa are about women
Wiki Loves Women project addresses this bias and focuses on bridging two significant gaps on Wikipedia project- Women and Africa-both in term of content about this subject and participation by women from the continent. The project leverages on Wikipedia role as global knowledge resource to achieve accessible and fair representation of women online.
The Wiki Loves Women project is designed by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood to align with the WikiAfrica movement and is run in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. Isla Haddow-Flood, is a writer, editor and project strategist and Florence Devouard is a public speaker, open advocate and former Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation. The project is coordinated in Nigeria by Olaniyan Olushola, the co-founder of Wikimedia UG Nigeria. It takes place in four sub-Saharan African countries, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. The proposal and project documentation are published under CC BY SA 4.0.
Useful links:
Wiki Loves Women links
- website: www.wikiloveswomen.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WikiLovesWomen
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen
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Meta pages: