Zubair Qureshi
More than 40 volunteers gathered at the residence of Sweden’s ambassador Ingrid Johansson on Saturday to add more content to Wikipedia, the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopedia, about Pakistani women. Wikipedia also happens to be the first port of call for those in search of information about a famous person or historical event. However, it’s currently far from equal. There are four times more articles about men than women and around 90 percent of those who write articles on Wikipedia are men. It’s obviously an inaccurate reflection of women’s achievements – and it has to change. In order to do its bit of effort to enhance women representation at the Wikipedia, Embassy of Sweden organized an event called #WikiGap, in partnership with Digital Rights Foundation, Media Matters for Democracy, and UN Women.
Over the course of two days, volunteers created some 50 new articles on notable Pakistani women and topics relating to women’s rights, such as women CEOs, entrepreneurs, lawyers, athletes and models.
The new articles that can be reached on the Internet include names like Rafia Qaseem Baig (the first Pakistani woman to enroll in bomb disposal unit), Kanwal Ahmed (founder of one of Pakistan’s largest female online groups, Soul Sisters), Munizae Jahangir (journalist), and Zainab Abbas (Pakistani cricket commentator and sports analyst).
According to Swedish Ambassador, the purpose of organizing #WikiGap is to empower women to claim their entitled role in the public sphere. Let’s work together to close the internet gender
gap.
This event is also part of the global #WikiGap campaign, originally launched by Wikimedia Sweden and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
So far, almost 60 countries have taken part in #WikiGap.
More than 1800 participants have added or updated more than 13 000 Wikipedia articles on prominent women in more than 30 different languages.
