Code, Culture and Community: How 115 editors made women visible in 4 Philippine cities

From the pine tree-lined, mountainous Baguio to the largest city in the Philippines in terms of land area – Davao City, the coastal town of Sual in Pangasinan to the queen city of the South, Cebu City; the Philippines recently saw an surge in gender-focused editing efforts.

Shared Knowledge Asia Pacific ( SKAP) led four Wikiwomen events in Baguio City and Sual Pangasinan and collaborated together with Wikiclub Cebu for HERstorya event at the Cebu City Public Library and with Wikiclub Zamboanga for the Wikiwomen Davao Launch and Meetup.

These events brought together participants from across the Philippine archipelago who are 80% new editors. The rest composed of partners and organizers. The initiatives sucessfully bridged the gender gap on Wikimedia projects by focusing on underrepresented women in various fields.

From coding to culture, weaving to web

Wikiwomen from Davao paid tributte to Mindanaoan weavers, all National Living Treasures apltly called in Filipino “Manlilikha ng Bayan” Portraits and local translation of their English articles were added to Wikipedia, translated in Cebuano language as Davaoenos are fluently speakers of the Cebuano language. There was a sense of pride when the mentor asked the young ones, how they feel about contributing indigenous knowledge to Wikipeda. The participants were at first reluctant, the common sentiment is ” why will we edit Wikipedia since its credibility is questionable because anybody can edit it?

But when answered and demonstrated the various Wikipedia projects, they learned about the guardrails embedded in creating and updating an article, they realized how strict those editorial policies can be and not everyone can be successful if they will not follow those policies.

“I was surprised to learn that Wikipedia has a lot of projects and that there is even the term Wikiwomen. I think that is an inclusive community where passionas of young women like me can contribute in Wikipedia. I like the lecture that said we should share our culture to the rest of the world and I said to myself, Davao City deserves to be there because our is so diverse and rich” – Chantal, Wikiwoman Davao

After warming up, they started to co-own the moment and began searching for women content that they can create in their local language, some in Pangasinan, Ilokano, Waray and Cebuano.

The women from the 11 tribal groups in Davao City rarely have mentions in Wikipedia. Most of them faceless, unrecognized, under represented. But these women are the pride of the Philippines, Their expertise and excellent skills were recognized by the national government and they are best representatives of Women in Arts. The launch of Wikiwomen in Davao coded them from weaving to Wikipedia.

Sharing the colors of bloom, festival and folklore

In Baguio City, women who participated in the Panagbenga 2026 were given spotlight. The Panagbenga Festival which started in 1996 to help Baguio City and the Cordillera region recover from the devastation of the 1990 earthquake. The term Panagbenga came from the Kankaney word which means ‘season of blooming’.

A group of photographers and content creators joined the event to highlight women who participate in Panagbenga and show the vibrant Cordillera culture, fabric and fashion artistically weaved and turned into fashion masterpieces.

Majorettes at the Panagbenga Festival 2026 via Lakandulaxd, Wikimedia Commons

Community driven

These main events were spearheaded by SKAP, in partnership with WikiClubs Cebu and Zamboanga who collaborated for the Davao launch. They say there is strength in numbers and working together gave birth to another Wikiclub in the heart of Mindanao- Davao City. Looking at how scarce Davao content has on various Wikipedia projects, the community decided to help improve Davao’s content, mentors the new editors, engage more partners and hold more events in the future for growth and scale.

The editing sessions covered a diverse of topics to ensure broad representation. Participants worked on biographies and content-related to women in arts and media, women in science and tecnology, women in entertainment and women in performing arts. The Sual contingent have even edited their favorite K-Pop women artists in Ilokano and Pangasinan. They were energetic, celebratory and excited to be part of this movement where they can contribute their skills and living heritage and share it to the world.

We heart the numbers

Across the four events staged in march of 2026, the community achieved significant contributions:

• 115 registered editors, 80% newly minted editors, 20% returning editors
• 841 Wikimedia Commons uploads
• 241 women-related articles edited and some newly created
• 72 new references added

What have we learned about holding Wikiwomen events and other initiatives?

It is not easy to engage young people to edit Wikipedia. That is a fact for GenZs. They know Wikipedia but rarely is attracted to it because as dogital natives, they already conveniently have Generative AI on their devices, readily and speedily giving them answers. They did not realize Wikipedia is the largest knowledge repository, written in structured data and an open knowledge platform with neutral point of view ( NPOV) made by humans for the consumption and use of humans and not intentionally for machines. They know that when they ask AI, it sometimes reference to Wikipedia and that is how they click the site and read further. Participants knew that Wikipedia is a clean corpus of knowledge where AI trains its intellgence. Participants discovered that there are only few women-related content on Wikipedia and very scarce on their local language. Participants learned about ‘cultural extinction by omission and they don’t want it to happen to their local heritage.

Participants wanted to write their own stories because if other write it for them, it will not be that accurate.

Across the country, there is a race to increase local content, be it culture, arts and heritage because AI is transforming how humans live, work and consume knowledge. If an Ilokano speaks with Ai in Ilokano,teh Ai must be culturally sensitive and accurate. And the responsibility to teach AI begins with their training data and that most likely is Wikipedia in all its languages across all its projects.

Tom Peters said in one his books that “Tomorrow belongs to women.”

We say “In March 2026, the year Wikipedia turned 25, a hundred editors dedicated efforts to notable Filipino women so they become more visible in smaller languages across the Philippines”

Mabuhay ang mga kababaihan sa buong mundo (Long live the women of the world)!”