Empowering Representation: Africa Wiki Women’s Wikidata Birthday Contest on African Women’s Occupation

In African communities, women have long played significant roles across diverse fields, from agriculture, where our grandmothers were at the forefront of ensuring sufficient food for their families, to academia, entrepreneurship, and technology. Yet, despite their impact, data about African women remain underrepresented in open data repositories like Wikidata, which would enable free and easy retrieval by all.

This disparity mirrors the global gender data gap that persists on Wikimedia projects, with most entries skewed toward male accomplishments and experiences. As of October 2024, statistics from our findings on Humaniki revealed only 23.51% of the items on Wikidata were about women in Africa using citizenship proprieties.

In response to this imbalance, Africa Wiki Women (AWW) launched the African Wiki Women- Wikidata Birthday Contest on African Women’s Occupations with grant support from Wikimedia Deutschland as a targeted campaign to increase visibility for African women on Wikidata by addressing one of the many underrepresented aspects of their identities—occupations, in a traditionally male-dominated space. This contest ran from October 1st to November 31st, 2024, commemorating Wikidata’s 12th birthday anniversary. The event garnered a dynamic mix of 130 experienced and new contributors committed to documenting African women’s underrepresented, yet vital work in various professions.

Background and Inspiration

The idea for the contest stemmed from the Wikidata:WikiProject Women/Women without occupation, which highlights women’s data items lacking occupational statements globally. Recognizing the importance of representation, the AWW ran several Wikidata queries to identify gaps specific to African women alone and found that information on women from 46 out of 54 African countries lacked occupational statements on Wikidata. This inspired the team to create a month-long campaign aimed at addressing this gap by focusing specifically on adding occupation statements.

Building the Framework for the Contest

To support participants, AWW set up a metapage for the contest to provide resources and guidance on how to get involved. The page also documented the 46 queries used to identify missing occupation data, and it facilitated sign-up, drawing 130 participants via the event registration tool, with 125 editors on its Outreach Dashboard. The contest was designed with a strong emphasis on both learning and quality contribution, with multiple steps to ensure participants were well-prepared:

• Three Training Sessions: We hosted three online training sessions, each attended by at least 25 participants, covering topics such as an introduction to Wikidata, adding occupation statements, and generating Wikidata queries. These sessions aimed to familiarize participants with the platform’s tools and functions, while an office hour session offered personalized support for hands-on learning.  More details about our activities can be found in our “Celebrating Wikidata’s 12th Birthday with Africa Wiki Women: A Contest to Bridge the Data Gap on African Women” blog.
• Focused Support and Quality Review: During the campaign, the contest team provided one-on-one support for participants who needed additional assistance. A dedicated four-person review team carefully checked each contribution to ensure accuracy, especially since occupation data required precise verification.

Overcoming Challenges and Ensuring Quality

The contest highlighted both the potential and challenges of working with diverse data on Wikidata. For example, occupation categorisation posed unique difficulties, as some participants initially labelled roles like “Queen mother,” “Wife,” or “Student” as occupations, sparking discussions on what qualified as an occupation in the Wikidata framework. The team guided participants in refining their understanding of occupations and helped correct these entries to align with Wikidata standards.

Another significant challenge was tracking specific edits related to occupation data on the dashboard, which recorded all edits made by participants, not solely those relevant to the contest. To address this, participants were asked to document their contributions directly on the event page, making it easier to assess the contest’s impact.

Achievements and Impact

The campaign successfully updated 323 Wikidata items with occupation statements, surpassing the original goal of 277 entries. This accomplishment represents a meaningful contribution to the visibility of African women’s roles across various fields and highlights the diversity of women’s contributions in Africa. Additionally, AWW’s focus on training and skill-building paid off, as many participants expressed newfound confidence in using Wikidata tools.

The contest also spurred greater interest and enthusiasm within the community. Participants from Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya attended and contributed, with many expressing eagerness to continue contributing to Wikidata and sharing their skills with others.

The group noticed other positive outcomes:

• Skills Development: Newcomers gained essential Wikidata editing skills, including adding images, references, and linking Wikidata to other Wikimedia projects.
• Community Engagement: The event fostered a supportive learning environment, encouraging collaboration and knowledge-sharing among participants.
• Increased Representation: By focusing on African women’s occupations, the contest made a significant impact on addressing Wikidata’s content gap, enriching the platform’s diversity.

Reflecting on Lessons Learned

The AWW community gained valuable insights from the contest, which will help inform future campaigns:

1. Establishing Clear Guidelines and a Timeline: Setting explicit rules and deadlines for editing and review processes would help streamline participation and reduce the review workload.
2. Expanding Localized Resources: Given language and technical challenges, the team hopes to see more localized resources available in the future to make Wikidata accessible to a broader audience.
3. Promoting Further Community Engagement: Based on participant feedback, AWW plans to make additional queries available on the event’s metapage in future campaigns to keep the community engaged and well-supported throughout.

Looking Ahead

Building on this success, AWW envisions a more inclusive Wikidata community in the future, with resources tailored to meet the needs of contributors from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Through continued partnerships and resource development, AWW aims to address the barriers that African editors face, from limited data access to technical support.

The Africa Wiki Women Wikidata Birthday Contest has demonstrated the power of community-led initiatives to create positive change on Wikidata. By focusing on African women’s occupations, AWW has taken a meaningful step toward a more representative knowledge base, underscoring the impact of African contributors in building a diverse, inclusive, and accurate Wikimedia ecosystem.