IWD 2025: Bridging the gender gap with contributory articles on Wikimedia
6 min read
IWD 2025: Bridging the gender gap with contributory articles on Wikimedia
…..as WikiGap Nigeria holds a symposium in commemoration of International Women’s Day.
By Onome Naomi
Wikimedia, in collaboration with NAWOJ Lagos Chapter, held its yearly training for female media professionals on Thursday and Friday, 6th-7th March, 2025, in Lagos. The essence of the training is meant to spur media professionals into bridging the gap between the female and male contributory articles on Wikipedia and Wikidata.
Wikimedia, as said, is committed to creating a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge by way of contribution. The Wikimedia products include Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikidata, Wikisource, MediaWiki, WikiUniversity, Wikispecies, Wiki News, Wiktionary, and Wikimedia (incubator, meta-wiki, common), Wikivoyage…
The program director of Wikimedia Nigeria, Ayokanmi Oyeyemi, urges media professionals to be contributors on Wikipedia in the interest of female professionals and career women, noting that women have a low percentage of contributory articles compared to the male folks. The training also centered on how to go about contributing practically and successfully without a hitch or rejection from volunteers who work as editors on the Wikimedia platform.
For your article to be successfully endorsed for publication, Wikipedia is said to only accept information from reliable sources, and no single organization has editorial control over Wikipedia. Wikipedia is entirely edited by volunteers, and disputes are addressed through open dialogue on the platform. Wikipedia articles are dynamic and continuously improved, and new edits can be deleted or reversed while old edits can be restored if necessary.
The Wikimedia platform also gives autonomy to the noble course of free information, and as a contributor, giving back to a resource you’ve benefitted from is vital. The platform allows expert input on difficult topics; it enables a contributor to be part of the world’s largest open-access project. A contributor has the benefit of public engagement and education, massive exposure, and reach. You must also ensure your field is thoroughly and accurately represented; Maximize use of the writing and images that you’ve already done; Improve your non-specialist.
Wikidata is Wikimedia’s youngest sister project, launched on October 29th, 2012, as part of the Wikimedia movement ecosystem with over 116 million items, 46,000 creative editors, 300 languages, and 1 billion edits. It’s an open linked data-structured multilingual knowledge base read and edited. This means both the information and the data structure can be freely used, shared, and remixed; moreover, the data acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects, including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.
However, Wikidata also provides support to many other sites and services beyond just Wikimedia projects! As learned by aspiring contributors (media professionals), the ability to know how Wikimedia works is an advantage to achieving set goals of bridging the gender gap to ensure women are visible on the Wikipedia and Wikidata platforms.
The Wikigap symposium
The Wikigap symposium held on March 11th, 2025, in commemoration of International Women’s Day, conclusively emphasized that information is the key in bridging the gap between women and men on the Wikimedia platform by making contributory efforts to create articles on successful women.
The speakers: Toyin Ogunlana—Director General, Lagos State Records and Archives Bureau; Oluwatoyin Atanda—President, Junior Chambers International (JCI) Nigeria; Dr. Nkiru Balonwu—Founder, African Soft Power Group; Korede Demola Adeniji—Executive Director (South), Alternative Bank all talked extensively about acquiring and sustaining knowledge through books and trainings.
The representative of Toyin Ogunlana urged the Wikigap to consider women at the grassroots level for inclusivity in its contributory articles. Says the audacity put into challenging roles could spur a person into achieving goals and objectives.
Oluwatoyin Atanda noted that women are not encouraging their gender to succeed. She added that, to succeed in life, you have to put your first foot forward to make sure you are seen and will be rewarded in time to come. Encourages women to help each other succeed.
Dr. Nkiru Balonwu added that it is necessary to read books, learn from them, and put into use what is being learned, saying that’s a recipe for being a successful woman. Encourages women to be more visible out there, take on challenging roles and responsibilities, and see it through.
Korede Demola gave insights on the formula to achieving great feats as a woman, saying women’s visibility in the Wikigap will give room for more encompassing achievements. Women will break barriers to reach great heights and be documented for their achievements; there will be space for a healthy competition through profiling, a situation where women will be willing to be documented on Wikigap to showcase that they have achieved notable feats and are ready to do more.
The symposium ended with a press conference where representatives of NAWOJ Lagos—Olawunmi Shittu, Women FM—Mrs. Aiki Odiawa, Head of Political Affairs, Nordic Embassy of Sweden Abuja—Frederick Ahsberg, the Executive Director of Wikimedia Nigeria— Omolayo Olasiji, all noted that the contribution of female articles on Wikigap will see a considerable change in 2025.
The Lagos NAWOJ Chairperson, Dr. Adeola Ekine’s representative, Mrs. Olawunmi Shittu, assures of NAWOJ’s contribution to promoting the female gender and sensitization of the girl child. She reviewed antecedents and subsequent programs organized by NAWOJ Lagos Chapter to promote the inclusivity of women in taking on leadership roles in politics and other sectors. Says there are plans underway to ensure sustainability in the campaign for women-inclusive governance as well as the grooming of the girl child in the society.
She added that the collaboration between Wikimedia and NAWOJ will be promoted and sustained to enable female contributors to focus on creating articles for more women, thereby bridging the margin between both genders.
In Olawunmi’s words, she said:
“Women are underrepresented not just on Wikipedia but in all other aspects of life, be it in academics, politics, or others. As a gender-focused organization, NAWOJ has been partnering with some gender-based organizations.”
“We are constantly doing this to create a balance and breach that gap amongst both genders. On Wikipedia, only 20% is represented, which is a far cry from what is expected.”
“We cater for children, not only women; we train women to take leadership positions in notable professions. The N.U.J., for example, has women in leadership positions; we also carried out lots of philanthropic works during the Covid-19 pandemic, sensitizing citizens.”
“Our partnership with Wikipedia is aimed at encouraging female practitioners to promote the female gender. It’s our joy to extend our collaborations. We concentrate on training women not just in journalism, and we are scouting for more partners so that we can reach a larger audience of women in other sectors.”
“NAWOJ needs more financial support to expand our reach, and that’s why we need more partners.”
Wikipedia spokesperson Mrs. Omolayo Olasiji says,
‘Supporting initiatives such as this is a priority for us. We support gender rights and human rights in general, and Nigeria is a country of interest. And it is all about documenting Nigerian history.”
Mrs. Aiki Odiawa says,
Women Radio will be 10. Every year, we hold a conference called ‘The Voice of Women.’ It is an empowerment conference created to enhance visibility for women in all sectors, as well as support more women in government.
“The men need to see that we are not a threat; rather, we have so much value to offer. We have partnered with Wikipedia to train and award outstanding journalism.”
“We train women, especially the young journalists coming up from the private and state-owned media; we fight for their welfare as well. We also support women in the political circle.
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