Roger Bamkin

Ten years ago I started a group called “Women in Red” which consists of hundreds of Wikipedia editors in thirty plus languages who are concerned about the on-line gender gap. When we started there were a quarter of a million biographies of notable people on the English Wikipedia and only 15% of them were women. Over ten years we have organised over 300 on-line editathons and about 70 in person meetings at Edinburgh University. We have written 100,000 new biographies of women and the percentage of women is now 20%. The budget over that ten years was zero. You do not need money to do this. Anyone with access to the internet can do this, Wikipedia is free (and there is a version in Chichewa)

My interest in Malawi came about when I discovered that the BBC had chosen Ulanda Mtamba from Malawi to be one of their “100 Women” together with people like Michelle Obama and Melinda Gates. She is a fellow Rotary member making a big difference to the education of girls but there was no profile for her on Wikipedia in any language. There is now. I have discovered the partnership, Roseby Gadama and Thondwe. Roseby leads the 40 Malawian women MPs and not many of them had articles (they do now). The visibility of African women is very low.

NOTE - All the images in this profile are cc-by-sa and their attribution is available on line via google images

Type the name of a Malawian woman MP into Google. Chances are I wrote some of whar it says.

What can the partnership do? It could sponsor a drive to put Malawian women and places on Wikipedia (by anyone of any gender and any nationality). One of the biggest barriers is photos - we need the licensed permission to use lots. The Scottish, UK and US governments use open licensing. They use the same license as Wikipedia so that anyone can re-use our common wealth. I would like the partnership to adopt open licensing of their photos in the hope that Malawian organisations might follow. We can help and put photos of role models on the phones of girls in Malawi by just changing the way we work.

I am trying to get Dorothea to help with organising a meeting, but I’m told that this is a member-led organisation. Could you help? Could you Clap? Could you Support this change? roger@bamkin.org.uk