Wikipedia:Visual representation of women



Gender balance, diversity and fairness are values that Wikipedia promotes in the interests of all editors and readers. Even though, the Gender bias on Wikipedia, also known as the Gendergap, is a persistent reality. It refers to criticism towards the nature and quantity of content biased on the online encyclopedia due to a dominant majority of male editors. In April 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation conducted its first survey, revealing that less than 13% of its contributors are female. In the last years, efforts to increase female editorship are to be underlined such as dedicated edit-a-thons to increase the coverage of women's topics in Wikipedia and to encourage more women to edit Wikipedia.

To go further and approach the topic in a diverse way, this essay page points at the lack of images on Wikipedia when it comes to represent women. This absence of visual culture (portraits, self-portraits, drawings, etc.) reinforces the fact that female personalities are nor strongly present neither portrayed.

This page may help to consider the phenomenon and reflect on new type of events and contributions on Wikipedia, oriented in the production of a visual culture around female personalities, and more widely women on Wikipedia.

Infoboxes
Infoboxes are usually used to improve the appearance of an article on Wikipedia. Its template offers the possibility to link an image previously uploaded and licensed on Wikimedia Commons.

To improve an article of a personality who has not entered yet the Public Domain, Wikipedia editors, if they are not granted permission by copyright holders, may face issues when trying to provide an image. The options to be considered in the situation are the following : to request permission to copyright holders of the studied personality or to request permission to copyright holders of the photographer, author of the photography of the studied personality. In some cases, self-portrait can be used and placed in the infobox, if they assure physical likeness.

When these conditions are not to be fulfilled, as encountered on some Wikipedia articles, a diverse way is to produce a personal work.

Wikimedia Commons
Existing categories and sub-categories on Wikimedia Commons :
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Portrait_drawings
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Portrait_drawings_of_women
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Portrait_drawings_of_men
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Portraits_of_women
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Portraits_of_men

Call for visual contributions


In the online communities of projects such as Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap, an edit-a-thon is a design sprint-like event where editors edit and improve a specific topic or type of content, typically including basic editing training for new editors.

As a way to enrich articles about women with visual contributions, graphic design oriented events could be organized. Editing would leave place in first to creation of visual works. Those creations would be digitized, uploaded, informed and licensed on Wikimedia Commons before being edited on Wikipedia.

Diverse techniques are to be considered :
 * Drawing
 * Painting
 * Stencil
 * Silkscreen_printing
 * Illustration
 * Graphic_design

Addressing the non-neutrality of representations
No representation is “neutral”. It could be interesting to add details about how a picture is made in the description of the image itself.