Swedish embassy, UN partner with Wikimedia Levant to close gender gap on Wikipedia

AMMAN — The Swedish embassy in Amman and the UN in Jordan, along with a broad network of local Jordanian partners, are cooperating with Wikimedia Levant to highlight the profiles of women experts and role models from Jordan and the Arab world on International Women's Day. 

"With the initiative, we want to increase the number of women represented on Wikipedia and draw attention to the important achievements of great Jordanian and Arab women," a statement by the Swedish embassy e-mailed to The Jordan Times on Wednesday said.

Wikipedia is the world's largest online and user-generated encyclopaedia, and its content influences and colours users’ knowledge about the world, the statement said, adding that there, nevertheless, exists a great imbalance on the website, where 90 per cent of the content is created by men, and there are four times more articles about men than there are about women. 

To contribute to a more accurate picture, the Swedish embassy, the UN and Wikimedia have therefore taken the initiative for the #WikiGap event. 

"On March 8 —  International Women's Day — we will be joined by the Swedish ministry for foreign affairs and Swedish embassies, which are organising parallel events in more than 50 countries, from Sweden to Vietnam, Egypt, Colombia and Jordan, together with local actors and partners," the embassy indicated.

In Jordan, the event is being conducted in collaboration with a plethora of local organisations and actors, such as the UN in Jordan, The Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of Jordan, the Women in Business Arabia network, The Khawarizmi University Technical College, Writers’ Cell, the Olympic Committee in Jordan, SheFighter, Creative Commons Jordan, Jordan Open Source Association and Wikimedia Levant.