WikiAfrica Hour #44: Women Visibility: How Wikimedia Movement sheds light on women

In WikiAfrica Hour’s 44th Episode, aired live on 26th March 2025, guest host Isla Haddow-Flood discusses the main challenges that affect women’s participation and contribution, the ideal ratio of women’s participation, what role our community initiatives play in empowering women and what we need furtherly.

I was shocked to discover that most of Wikipedia and other project readers are male. Only about 20-30% of women actually read Wikipedia, and we know that there is a funnel from readers to editors to admins and other online activities. So because Wikipedia was started by men, they are interested in male content. So there are a lot of articles about football clubs and cars and everything, but there are virtually no articles about designers, fashion and cosmetics, whatever. So women are looking for content online and finding it in other places, and that’s already reducing the number of women that look at the content. – Victoria Doronina

In my opinion, the mentorship could be a mediation tool between this person’s desire and community to bring the communication between the two and say to one person, okay, this is not going to be possible. You are not going to be able to put all the fairy tales on Wikipedia, but you will be able to write about the authors of the fairy tales and bring data into wiki data. – Natacha Rault

This WikiAfrica Hour episode’s guest host is Isla Haddow-Flood,  the chair and the co-leader of Wiki In Africa. She is also the co-founder of our Wiki Loves Women initiative that has both developed a cohort of female leaders across Africa through our programs and the on-going Focus Group. Wiki Loves Women has brought gender-focused initiatives such as SheSaid, the Inspiring Open podcast, and the ISA Tool’s Tell Us About Her to the movement. 

Our guests include:

• Victoria Doronina: She started contributing to Russian Wikipedia in 2006, became an admin, and twice served on the Arbitration Committee. In 2021, she was elected to the WMF Board of Trustees and re-elected in 2024.
• Bukola James: certified librarian. Sub-Saharan Liason of Let’s Connect. Co-founder pf Africa Wiki Women. Vice Chair of Wikipedia+Education User Group. Chairman of Learnovation Network Foundation
• Franziska Heine: Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland
• Natacha Rault: Director of les sans pagEs

The WikiAfrica Hour In Focus segment was a recorded inspiring open interview with Victoria Doronina (one of the guest speakers) to shed light on her journey in the open wikimedia movement.

This WikiAfrica Hour episode aired live: check out our Website or the WikiAfrica Hour meta page to watch this or previous episodes.  All WikiAfrica Hour episodes are available on YouTube.