Welcome to Women in Red (WiR)! We are a group of volunteer (unpaid) editors of all genders who live around the world and speak dozens of languages. Across different language Wikipedias, we focus on reducing systemic bias regarding gender representation (content gender gap) in the wiki movement. Our goal is to "move the needle" in terms of statistical representation of women and other gender minorities on Wikipedia. We recognized a need for this work in 2014 when we learned that, as of October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia's biographies were about women.[1] Without a particular percentage in mind, we recognized that with persistence, we could increase it, one article at a time. With only this in mind, Women in Red was established in July 2015, at Wikimania Mexico City, by Roger Bamkin and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight.
According to Humaniki, the percentage of women's biographies on the English Wikipedia has reached 19.87% as of 15 July 2024. That means that of 2,012,872 biographies, only 400,034 are about women.[2] Not impressed? "Content gender gap" is a form of systemic bias, and WiR addresses it in a positive way through shared values.
Can we increase the percentage still further? Yes! But we need you in order to do so. How? There are more than 30,000 general forum comments from over a thousand different editors on our talkpage.[3] Ask there. You don't have to be a member in order to participate in the conversations; just please be civil.
Do the articles have to be perfect when they are created? No. But establishing them according to Wikipedia's policies is the first step, and that's the focus of Women in Red: new article creation. Over time, other editors will improve these articles; maybe that's you.
Our Wikipedia WikiProject focuses on creating content regarding women's biographies, women's works, and women's issues. Our editors create articles in many different language Wikipedias. The objective is to turn "redlinks" (like this one) into blue ones. That's why we are called "Women in Red".
We take an inclusive view towards subject matter, editors, and language communities:
Editors: We do not focus on the gender of the editor. Anyone/everyone is welcome to be a member, participant, enthusiast of Women in Red. If you participate in WiR, you can join up officially using the box in the top right-hand corner of this page. You are also welcome to add our userbox template {{User WikiProject Women in Red}} to your user page, to produce:
Language communities: While Women in Red began on English Wikipedia, it is an international commitment with dozens of other language communities. Please add a link to your language's coordination page here.
Subject matter:
If the subject of the article self-identifies as a woman—binary and/or non-binary and/or other, that person is included within the scope of Women in Red. Historic cases where it's unknown how they self-identified also count. The goal of the project is to increase inclusion, and we'd rather not block article subjects from being included in an article creation drive.
In addition to creating new articles, we create and maintain hundreds of lists of "missing" notable women. Some of these women have an article on some language Wikipedia, while others have no article in any Wikipedia. We call these lists, "redlists".
Click on our Redlinks index to see our lists of missing articles by focus area, occupation and nationality. Like everything else on Wikipedia, this is incomplete, so feel free to add pertinent items to our crowd-sourced lists.
While all redlists have redlinks, our redlists are generated in numerous ways:
Every year, our members upload thousands of images to Wikimedia Commons: photographs of women, their signatures, their works, etc. In turn, these images can be added to Wikipedia articles. This is another way people can be involved in improving women's representation on Wikipedia. Over 10,000 new images were added in 2022.
WiR works by filling in missing articles based on extensive lists of needed topics. The index to our wide range of topics and nationalities can be found at the Redlist index. Please make these red links blue. Notable women without a Wikipedia biography can be added to any crowd-sourced redlists they match; and added to wikidata such that they're included in wikidata-derived redlists. We also have a guide to adding names to redlists, and to creating new redlists.
This section is a transcluded subpage, and may contain more information than is shown here. To view or edit, go to /Article alerts (watch this section).
Thanks firstly to Ronhjones, and now to Galobtter, we have a bot showing declined drafts submitted to AfC. Weekly updates highlight those most recently listed under New Additions. With a little bit of attention, some of them could well be moved to mainspace, encouraging the editors who created them to progress on Wikipedia.
WiR maintains resources to help you contribute, including lists of topical books and external links, information on editing in general, and contacts you can reach out to for specific needs. They can be found at Resources.
Academic research on Wikipedia's content gender gap is also documented at Research.
This section is a transcluded subpage, containing more information than is shown here. To view detailed month-by-month results or to edit, go to Metrics.
The articles created for any month, including the current month, can be displayed by clicking on one of the months in the archive box.
We track the articles we create each month. Reports bot updates these lists automatically, but you can manually add and annotate entries. The bot will remove non-existent pages. More details about the bot. Our metrics talkpage is here: Metrics talkpage
The evolving list for this month (see Archives box) is created by the bot which lists new women's biographies on the basis of their female gender on Wikidata. At present, the bot does not list women's works, associations or related articles but you are encouraged to add these to the list manually. A WiR Wikidata page provides information on how you can help ensure WiR metrics are up-to-date.
The graph shows the number of articles created each month. The apparent decrease for the current month reflects the number of articles created up to today's date. Only data on completed months indicate overall progress.
For personal metrics on how many articles you've created about women, see this tool.
If you want to measure gender diversity in a given Wikipedia article, use this tool.
As a result of figures presented by Humaniki, we keep posting on the main Women in Red page the percentage of women's biographies on the English version of Wikipedia. Increases are steady but marginal: for example from July 2022 to July 2023, the percentage has risen from around 19.3% to around 19.6%.
Thanks to an analysis presented by Andrew Gray on the WIR talk page, it certainly looks as if the number of men and women involved in sports has a significant influence on the statistics for women. A detailed account of Gray's work is presented in "Gender and BLPs on Wikipedia, redux", which he published on 2 August 2023.
The two lists below show that biographies of living people (BLPs) born in recent years are approximately 50% female if data on all categories of athletes are excluded. By contrast, the equivalent overall figures (including athletes) are only around 25%. As a result, biographies of very large numbers of male sportspeople seem to be responsible for the huge difference. Andrew Gray's detailed lists below document how figures for BLPs by year of birth have evolved over the years:
Overall development of BLPs since the 1920s for all biographies
Missing birth year BLPs - 150,574, of which 53,355 female - 35.4%
1920s birth BLPs - 5,096, of which 1,325 female - 26.0%
1930s birth BLPs - 39,055, of which 7,086 female - 18.1%
1940s birth BLPs - 95,602, of which 18,495 female - 19.3%
1950s birth BLPs - 128,518, of which 27,172 female - 21.1%
1960s birth BLPs - 145,300, of which 33,390 female - 23.0%
1970s birth BLPs - 150,539, of which 37,893 female - 25.2%
1980s birth BLPs - 171,072, of which 42,880 female - 25.1%
1990s birth BLPs - 150,880, of which 36,944 female - 24.5%
2000s birth BLPs - 30,042, of which 7,542 female - 25.1%
Development of BLPs since the 1920s for biographies excluding athletes
If we discount all athletes using the infobox method, the results are:
Missing birth year BLPs - 140,177, of which 51,021 female - 36.4%
1920s birth BLPs - 4,321, of which 1,228 female - 28.4%
1930s birth BLPs - 28,978, of which 6,161 female - 21.2%
1940s birth BLPs - 73,095, of which 16,566 female - 22.7%
1950s birth BLPs - 95,893, of which 23,644 female - 24.7%
1960s birth BLPs - 96,175, of which 26,632 female - 27.8%
1970s birth BLPs - 81,682, of which 27,562 female - 33.7%
1980s birth BLPs - 58,078, of which 24,816 female - 42.7%
1990s birth BLPs - 23,281, of which 11,754 female - 50.5%
2000s birth BLPs - 2,850, of which 1,539 female - 54.0%
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
These are the 20 most recent WP:DYK entries for WiR. Updated approximately weekly by User:JL-Bot.
... that South Korean actress Na O-mi's stage name was inspired by the song "I Dream of Naomi"? (2024-07-11)
... that Rosemary Miller won her state's skeet shooting championship one year after learning the sport, and then won a state shooting championship in all but two years for the rest of her life? (2024-07-10)
... that Anna Russell Cole, a significant benefactor of Vanderbilt University, donated $10,000 in 1926 to endow the office of dean of women? (2024-07-09)
... that Lois E. Trott ran the first lodging house for homeless girls in America, providing shelter and support for over 1,000 girls annually, all without receiving any payment? (2024-07-08)
... that Italian pianist and composer Maria Luigia Pizzoli posthumously received the title of Maestro di Contrappunto (master of counterpoint)? (2024-06-23)
... that playwright Vivian Cosby was hospitalized for three and a half years after lighting herself on fire because of a faulty gas heater? (2024-06-22)
... that Shirley Warde not only starred in theater and movie productions, but also wrote playscripts and short stories for magazines? (2024-06-14)
... that Rachel Brem discovered a tumor in her own breast while testing ultrasound equipment for her hospital? (2024-06-12)
... that Bianca Babb, a pioneer girl captured by Comanches, described her time among them as "every day seemed to be a holiday", despite the hardships of her initial capture? (2024-06-12)
There has been considerable press coverage of WiR, to the point where the project has its own Wikipedia article. Below are some recent articles. To add articles to the list, visit Press.
^Graells-Garrido, Eduardo; Lalmas, Mounia; Menczer, Filippo (2015). "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media - HT '15: 165–174. arXiv:1502.02341. doi:10.1145/2700171.2791036. S2CID1082360.
