Dr. Jess Wade is on a long-term mission to ensure that Wikipedia includes women and minorities.
Wade tells Sonia Baghdady about the often overlooked contributions of women to the scientific community. Get involved now. Wade created 1,780 Wikipedia biographies for underrepresented scientists in an effort to address the problem of missing information.
She said, “I have created around 1,800.” “Everyday I feel so inspired and excited about discovering and writing about all these amazing women and people of colour, as well as people from historically exclusion groups.”
Wade says, “It’s hard to be objective when you’re writing on such amazing and impressive people… It means that I have to reduce my enthusiasm a bit.”
Wade published a report in 2019 that showed only 17 per cent of Wikipedia English-language biographies featured women. Wade said that while it was an alarming problem for Wikipedia, it was indicative of a wider problem in society.
She explained that “Society has been biased towards white men versus those of underrepresented communities.” “If we look at society, we don’t do enough to honor — whether that’s in newspapers, or awards,…
