Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red

About
Welcome to Women in Red (WiR)! We are a group of volunteer (unpaid) editors of all genders who live around the world and speak dozens of languages. Across different language Wikipedias, we focus on reducing systemic bias regarding gender representation (content gender gap) in the wiki movement. Our goal is to "move the needle" in terms of statistical representation of women and other gender minorities on Wikipedia. We recognized a need for this work in 2014 when we learned that, as of October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia's biographies were about women. Without a particular percentage in mind, we recognized that with persistence, we could increase it, one article at a time. With only this in mind, Women in Red was established in July 2015, at Wikimania Mexico City, by Roger Bamkin and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight.

According to Humaniki, the percentage of women's biographies on the English Wikipedia has reached 19.87% as of 15 July 2024. That means that of 2,012,872 biographies, only 400,034 are about women. Not impressed? "Content gender gap" is a form of systemic bias, and WiR addresses it in a positive way through shared values.

Can we increase the percentage still further? Yes! But we need you in order to do so. How? There are more than 30,000 general forum comments from over a thousand different editors on our talkpage. Ask there. You don't have to be a member in order to participate in the conversations; just please be civil.

Do the articles have to be perfect when they are created? No. But establishing them according to Wikipedia's policies is the first step, and that's the focus of Women in Red: new article creation. Over time, other editors will improve these articles; maybe that's you.

On Wikipedia
Our Wikipedia WikiProject focuses on creating content regarding women's biographies, women's works, and women's issues. Our editors create articles in many different language Wikipedias. The objective is to turn "redlinks" (like this one) into blue ones. That's why we are called "Women in Red".

We take an inclusive view towards subject matter, editors, and language communities:
 * Editors: We do not focus on the gender of the editor. Anyone/everyone is welcome to be a member, participant, enthusiast of Women in Red. If you participate in WiR, you can join up officially using the box in the top right-hand corner of this page. You are also welcome to add our userbox template to your user page, to produce:
 * Language communities: While Women in Red began on English Wikipedia, it is an international commitment with dozens of other language communities. Please add a link to your language's coordination page here.
 * Subject matter:
 * If the subject of the article self-identifies as a woman—binary and/or non-binary and/or other, that person is included within the scope of Women in Red. Historic cases where it's unknown how they self-identified also count. The goal of the project is to increase inclusion, and we'd rather not block article subjects from being included in an article creation drive.
 * In addition to creating new articles, we create and maintain hundreds of lists of "missing" notable women. Some of these women have an article on some language Wikipedia, while others have no article in any Wikipedia. We call these lists, "redlists".
 * Click on our Redlinks index to see our lists of missing articles by focus area, occupation and nationality. Like everything else on Wikipedia, this is incomplete, so feel free to add pertinent items to our crowd-sourced lists.
 * While all redlists have redlinks, our redlists are generated in numerous ways:
 * crowd-sourced (example, Crafts)
 * Wikidata-generated (example, Herpetologists)
 * based on a dictionary or other reference book (example, Encyclopédie Larousse)
 * based on a website (example, BBC 100 Women)
 * based on an international Authority Control (example, VIAF)

Wikimedia Commons
Every year, our members upload thousands of images to Wikimedia Commons: photographs of women, their signatures, their works, etc. In turn, these images can be added to Wikipedia articles. This is another way people can be involved in improving women's representation on Wikipedia. Over 10,000 new images were added in 2022.

Wikidata
We create and improve Wikidata items related to women, women's works, and women's issues.

Announcements

 * Please post recent announcements directly on this page for improved page editing history, watcher alerts and greater visibility

Add new announcements to the top. Sign with ~. Remove old ones after a couple of months.
 * New redlists: Internet Speculative Fiction Database, Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia, A Historical Dictionary of British Women, American Women Artists, Past and Present, Dictionary of Wisconsin History, Italian Women Writers, Mujeres de Nuestra Tierra (Argentina), Representative Women of New England, Encyclopedia of China

Events

 * For a complete list of events, visit WikiProject Women in Red/Events.

Lists of red links
WiR works by filling in missing articles based on extensive lists of needed topics. The index to our wide range of topics and nationalities can be found at the  Redlist index. Please make these red links blue. Notable women without a Wikipedia biography can be added to any crowd-sourced redlists they match; and added to wikidata such that they're included in wikidata-derived redlists. We also have a guide to adding names to redlists, and to creating new redlists.

Article alerts

 * See WikiProject Deletion sorting/Women for articles about women that are nominated for deletion.

Declined drafts
Thanks firstly to, and now to , we have a bot showing declined drafts submitted to AfC. Weekly updates highlight those most recently listed under New Additions. With a little bit of attention, some of them could well be moved to mainspace, encouraging the editors who created them to progress on Wikipedia.

Resources and research
WiR maintains resources to help you contribute, including lists of topical books and external links, information on editing in general, and contacts you can reach out to for specific needs. They can be found at Resources.

Academic research on Wikipedia's content gender gap is also documented at Research.

Metrics

 * This section is a transcluded subpage, containing more information than is shown here. To view detailed month-by-month results or to edit, go to Metrics.

Showcase
WiR is amazing and has way too much to showcase here. Please see Showcase for our recent and past achievements.

Recent Did You Know? blurbs
These are the 20 most recent WP:DYK entries for WiR. Updated approximately weekly by User:JL-Bot.

Press
There has been considerable press coverage of WiR, to the point where the project has its own Wikipedia article. Below are some recent articles. To add articles to the list, visit Press.

Academia
In addition to listings under Research, academic papers on gender bias in Wikipedia (as recorded in Wikidata) are listed in Scholia.

To include a paper, create an item about it on Wikidata (check first to avoid duplicates) and give it =.