Renown World Wikipedia Launch Online Campaign to Tackle Gender Disparity
Art and Feminism organiser Terry Boke speaks during a training workshop at Pwani University in Kilifi County. (Photo by Robby Ngoba)
By Robby Ngoba
Email, thecoastnewspaper@gmail.com
Some 19 percent of articles about women on Wikipedia, which is the world’s largest online and user generated encyclopedia, is gnawing the female representation gap.
The articles about men now exceed those about women by about four to one. However, art and feminism campaign organized by wikimedia has been launched to invite everyone to contribute to women’s history.
Speaking at Pwani University in Kilifi County during the art and feminism training, Terry Boke, one of the organisers of the art and feminism art campaign, says they are focusing on gender inclusivity targeting to generate more women content.
”We have realized that there is a glaring content gap in terms of women. Only 19 percent biographies on Wikipedia are about women. So, we want to close that gap by localizing the information on wikipedia,” she said.
She explains that most of the biographies are in english and want them now to be in Swahili.
During the training, participants were taught on how to open accounts, share and edit content.
The campaign aims at closing the gender gap on wikimedia and making the internet more gender equal by aiding articles about women.
She stated that collaboration between the media and civil society organizations will create more awareness on the gender gap.
”We want to empower the community, students from Pwani University, The Technical University of Mombasa (TUM), members of the media and the civil society organizations,” said Terry.
In addition, she said plans to launch a wiki club at the Pwani University are underway.
”We are going to open a wiki club at Pwani university so that every day there will be people in the club contributing in wikipedia and other online projects,” she added.
Winnie Kabintie, Wikimedia Kenya User Co-founder and a digital writer on her part says they are aiming at helping in shrinking the content gaps and also advancing the gender gaps as well.
She also asked President William Ruto to actualize his two-thirds gender rule he promised during the campaign period.
”We saw President Ruto during his campaign manifesto. He actually said that he’s going to implement the two-thirds gender role within 120 days. It’s been three years now. It’s not just about gender equality for the sake of the name. It is also how we are making these spaces or this empowerment meaningful to women,” said Kabintie.
She also faulted existing gender-based violence (GBV)laws saying they are weak and poorly enforced.
“GBV laws needs to be reviewed and made stronger against offenders,” she added.
Viviana Taiyan a third year student at Pwani university pursuing bachelor of arts in Kiswahili is among the people who were trained on wikipedia and how to share information.
”Women needs to stand up and fight for the rights. The state also needs to do more awareness in the villages so that girls can also be given a priority,” said Taiyan.
