Whose Knowledge?/VisibleWikiWomen

Many articles about women, in different Wikipedia languages, lack pictures. Women are invisible for so many reasons, including because the copyright holders of pictures preserve their exclusive rights, instead of using a Creative Commons license suitable for use on Wikipedia.

That’s why this March we are starting the #VisibleWikiWomen Challenge to reach out to women's rights and feminist NGOs, photographers, libraries, archives, and anyone who has access to pictures of women (with proper consent) to donate photos.

Half a billion people read Wikipedia every month, and it is the 5th most visited website in the world. Yet women are still underrepresented in Wikipedia's biographies: less than 1/4 of all Wikipedia biographies represent women - that's still true for nearly every language version of Wikipedia. And we estimate that less than 20% of biographies on Wikipedia contain any images at all. Women’s knowledge and contributions to the world are invisible in so many ways. Let’s change this!

Project Organizers

• Whose Knowledge? co-founders began thinking about this campaign in 2017 with a group of Wikimedians from the around the world.
• May Hachem93 and Señoritaleona are organizing the 2018 challenge as #VisibleWikiWomen Coordinators for Whose Knowledge?.

Why VisibleWikiWomen?

We are focused on gathering and sharing quality images under free licenses or public domain via Wikimedia Commons, so that these can be used to illustrate biographies of women on Wikipedia. These can be photographs or illustrations of women or images of their work, with their consent. We are looking for contemporary or historical images, of living women or women who lived some time ago. They can be new photos taken for the occasion, drawn portraits where no photos are available, or archival images.

Partners are encouraged to host or attend local events in their communities where photos can be taken or uploaded, release photos you might already have under free licence, and help promote and publicize this project. We invite local groups to lead this effort in ways that make most sense for your countries and interests: we’d love to learn from you! Planning is underway now – please contact us at visiblewikiwomenwhoseknowledge.org to share your ideas.

• 
  Ada Lovelace
• 
  Espérance Nyirasafari
• 
  Grace Banu
• 
  Jurema Werneck
• 
  Josefina Ludmer
• 
  Ruthe Farmer

How can I contribute?

1. Take pictures at public events in which notable women will be present, like conferences, live shows, etc.,
2. Communicate with photographers who may be able to donate images they've already taken of female public figures,
3. Search public domain pictures (the pictures whose license dropped as their owners passed away before 50+ or 70+ years, depending on the country),
4. Gather pictures from institutions and archives,
5. Create illustrations portraying remarkable women who may not have any images available under free license,
6. Once you have an image with the proper license, upload it to Commons with the VisibleWikiWomen Category
7. Categorize images in Commons and give them better descriptions,
8. Add the images to Wikipedia articles, Wikidata items, Wikiquote and other sister projects,
9. Write and translate articles about the portrayed women who do not yet have them, in your language,
10. Organize events like edit-a-thons at your country,
11. Contact us at visiblewikiwomenwhoseknowldge.org and we'll help you get started!

Resources to help you

Uploading to Wikimedia Commons

• Remember to categorize your photos under category:VisibleWikiWomen
• First steps/Uploading files. Here! or Here.
• Flickr is an excellent and easy source: ask albums to be switched to a free license (example long request, short message)!

Getting Consent

Guide for Illustrators

Super heroes in collaboration (Join us!)

• Women in Red
• Art + Feminism
• Mujeres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia

Social media (Join the conversation!)

• #VisibleWikiWomen
• Visit our Facebook page! Suggest figures you need us to raise a flag for to make them visible.

Edit-a-thons (Find an event near you!)

Alphabetical by country, Global events with event pages at top

Language	Trainer/ Organiser	Country or Region or Language	Event page
(English) Other languages	...	Global	Event page:
(English)	Women in Red/WikiWomen's User Group	Global/Online	Women's History Month, a collaboration with Art+Feminism and Whose Knowledge
(Spanish) Spanish	Wikimedia Uruguay	Uruguay	Editatona Arte y Feminismo en Uruguay 2018
(Spanish) Spanish	Mujeres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia	Argentina	Editatona de Mujeres Latinoamericanas en Buenos Aires Arte y Feminismo 2018
(Spanish) Spanish	Mujeres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia	Argentina	Editatona de Mujeres Latinoamericanas en Córdoba Arte y Feminismo 2018
(Spanish) Spanish	Mujeres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia	Bolivia	Editatona de Mujeres Latinoamericanas en La Paz Arte y Feminismo 2018

External links

• #VisibleWikiWomen – March 2018 Challenge!