Joint initiative to make Internet more gender equal

Ms. Caitlin Wiesen, UNDP Country Director in Vietnam speaking at the even

With the initiative, the organisers want to increase the number of women being represented on Wikipedia and help to make the internet and the society as a whole more gender-equal.

This event is a part of the global #WikiGap campaign, originally launched by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Wikimedia Sweden.

Similar events have already been held together with local actors and partners in more than 50 countries worldwide to improve women’s representation on the internet and help create a more gender-equal world.

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopaedia. Its content influences and colors users’ knowledge about the world. But there is a great imbalance on the website, like in society at large. 90% of the content is created by men, and there are four times more articles about men than there are about women. In the Vietnamese version of Wikipedia the numbers are even lower: less than 18% of the biographies are about women.

In his opening remark, Swedish Ambassador to Vietnam Pereric Högberg said “Wikipedia is a modern form of history writing. By raising the representation of women biographies, we will access more information which can help us all to learn, grow and develop.”

“When the Nobel Prize Committee this year announced Donna Strickland as the winner of the prize in physics her biography was not on the Wikipedia. An editor had unsuccessfully tried to publish an article about her. It was refused by the moderator due to the lack of reference for the soon to be Nobel Prize Winner qualified for a Wikipedia article. A striking example of the lack of gender equality on internet,” he added.  

#WikiGap initiative aims to improve the representation of women on Wikipedia. During the day-long event, participants will add content to Wikipedia by writing new articles and editing existing ones with information on women profiles, experts and significant women as role models in different fields. 

While Ms. Caitlin Wiesen, UNDP Country Director in Vietnam, said key to an equal future is empowering women and girls today to be digitally literate so that they can take full and equal advantage of  technologies - from the Internet to the Internet of things - as leaders and agents of change./.