Translations:Course-v1:edz+11+2023 SP/en/block-v1:edz+11+2023 SP+type@html+block@fb71589b843b4bb5827195e412c28db9/content/en

Getting beyond just the representation

However, just because a biography exists doesn’t necessarily mean that it will have public resonance or impact. A study in the Journal Communication “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/72/3/297/6529454?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="[object Object]">The Gender Divide in Wikipedia: Quantifying and Assessing the Impact of Two Feminist Interventions</a>” (access via the<a href="https://wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?auth=production&url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=157821869&site=eds-live&scope=site" target="[object Object]"> Wikipedia Library </a>or <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3739176" target="[object Object]">read a preprint </a>) found that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red" target="[object Object]">Women in Red </a> and Art+Feminism were “successful at adding content about women that would otherwise be missing, but they are less successful at addressing structural biases that limit the visibility of that content.” For the authors, the lack of subsequent use of the biographies by a general public (quantified as pageviews) means that the work done by community members is not yet reaching its stated goals.

Groups like<a href="https://womendonews.org/" target="[object Object]"> Women Do News</a> Initiative are focused on improving the visibility of women online in a way that affects them other than just on readers of the Wikimedia wikis: their focus is creating profiles for women journalists for when they are searched for on Google. But this doesn’t address the larger bias against searching for women online. If we are recruiting newcomers to edit Wikipedia or working with a limited pool of experienced editors who know how to edit content very effectively: what is going to be the most impactful use of their time? 

Creative ways of rethinking biography writing

If writing more biographies doesn’t necessarily have significant reader impact, maybe we could change the the information in women’s biographies that do have readers so that they have a greater impact across the knowledge ecosystem -- for example, several studies find that women’s biographies and men’s biographies on Wikipedia  <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Gender_gap_in_Wikipedia%27s_content" target="[object Object]">vary considerably both in language and content</a>, and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2020.1793846" target="[object Object]">this can have ripple effects onto other platforms that use Wikipedia as a foundation</a>, including both established technologies like search engines and emergent technologies like AI which have significant gender biases.

These kinds of structural projects are good for newer editors as well, for example we could focus edit-a-thons on reframing the language of biographies to be more inclusive. A<a href="https://girlgeek.io/neutrality-wtf-case-study-a-gendered-language-flipping-tool-that-exposes-bias/" target="[object Object]"> tool for finding biased language in English Wikipedia articles by Moriel Shottlander</a>, helps readers pick apart and explore the potential impact of gendered language on Wikipedia articles. Check out the tool here <a href="https://neutrality.wtf/" target="[object Object]">neutrality.wtf</a>.  

Additionally, supplementing or giving extra voice to Women already on the projects could make them more relevant across the internet. For example, the WikiQuote-focused initiative <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Women/SheSaid" target="[object Object]">SheSaid focuses on Women already documented in Wikimedia projects</a>, but by adding quotations gives them extra depth and nuance on the internet.

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The <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Women/SheSaid" target="[object Object]">SheSaid Campaign</a> has been an important campaign for bringing new kinds of organizers and editors to work on the Wikimedia Gender gaps. By starting with WikiQuote, editors contribute content that has potentially higher readership and audience.