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Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red

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Welcome to Women in Red!

Reaching a milestone of 20% in December 2024, Women in Red changes notable women's representation on Wikipedia from red-linked obscurity to an encyclopedic presence.
Find us ...
Here:
or athttps://w.wiki/347

About

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Welcome to Women in Red (WiR)! We are a group of volunteer (unpaid) editors of all genders who live around the world and belong to many different language and cultural communities. While our project extends over many language versions of Wikipedia, this page is principally devoted to our efforts on the English-language Wikipedia.

We focus on reducing systemic bias regarding gender representation (content gender gap) in the Wikipedia 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.[1] 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.

Women in Red is a very large, on-wiki-based community thanks to you, the editors who participate in our work. Did you know that it is also the most active topic-based WikiProject by human changes? Join us!

20% milestone reached in mid-December 2024

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See communication at 20% milestone

According to Humaniki, the percentage of women's biographies on the English Wikipedia is now over 20%: specifically reaching 20.003% by 16 December 2024. Using QLever, as of 6 June 2026, it had risen further to 20.37%. That means that of 2,133,650 biographies, only 434,553 are about women.[2] 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 34,000 general forum comments from over 1,200 different editors on our talkpage.[3] 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.

Where the work is done

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On Wikipedia

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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. You are also welcome to add our userbox template {{User WikiProject Women in Red}} 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, a non-binary person, and/or any other gender minority, 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:

Wikimedia Commons

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"Sue"

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

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

Announcements

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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.

Events

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

Ongoing initiatives

  • 2026 year-long initiative: #1day1woman: 2026
  • 2026 year-long initiative: Sports

    • New for this month

    Recently completed

    Upcoming events

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    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

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    This section is a transcluded subpage, and may contain more information than is shown here. To view or edit, go to /Article alerts (watch this section).
    See Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Women for articles about women that are nominated for deletion.
    Note: This report is based on the {{WIR}} banners of WikiProject Women in Red. If an article isn't listed here, first verify that it has one of those banners. If it has another women-related banner, like {{WikiProject Women}}, {{WikiProject Women's History}} or {{WikiProject Women scientists}}, look on those projects' article alert pages instead.

    Did you know

    (16 more...)

    Articles for deletion

    Redirects for discussion

    Good article nominees

    (15 more...)

    Requested moves

    Articles for creation

    (32 more...)

    Declined drafts

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    Thanks firstly to Ronhjones, and now to Galobtter, 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

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    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

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    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.

    About: additional details

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    The articles created for any month, including the current month, can be displayed by clicking on one of the months in the archive box.

    We track the articles we create each month. Reports bot updates these lists automatically, but you can manually add and annotate entries. The bot will remove non-existent pages. More details about the bot. Our metrics talkpage is here: Metrics talkpage

    The evolving list for this month (see Archives box) is created by the bot which lists new women's biographies on the basis of their female gender on Wikidata. At present, the bot does not list women's works, associations or related articles but you are encouraged to add these to the list manually.

    The graph shows the number of articles created each month. The apparent decrease for the current month reflects the number of articles created up to today's date. Only data on completed months indicate overall progress.

    For personal metrics on how many articles you've created about women, see this tool.

    Wikidata

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    A WiR Wikidata page provides information on how you can help ensure WiR metrics are up-to-date.

    Totals at a glance

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    Year Portion if
    applicable    		 Total Daily
    average
    201518 Jul – 31 Dec11,71170
    201628,39977
    201728,27177
    201827,32375
    201927,20775
    202030,11982
    202126,78073
    202218,89352
    202317,92549
    202420,14255
    202518,85452
    Grand total255,624

    Updated: Rosiestep (talk) 23:49, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Summary of Women in Red statistics from main page

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    DateWomenBiosPercentageIncrease in
     % for year    		Increase
    in women
    for year    		Increase
    in bios
    for year    		Percentage
    for year
    30-Sep-2015205,8141,299,04715.84%
    1-Jan-2017240,4451,432,90716.78%0.94%34,631133,86025.87%
    1-Jan-2018262,0991,509,34817.37%0.58%21,65476,44128.33%
    31-Dec-2018279,9591,573,34117.79%0.43%17,86063,99327.91%
    30-Dec-2019305,0721,678,32318.18%0.38%25,113104,98223.92%
    11-Jan-2021332,6221,778,12618.71%0.53%27,55099,80327.60%
    3-Jan-2022356,4391,865,51619.11%0.40%23,81787,39027.25%
    2-Jan-2023373,2631,921,35919.43%0.32%16,82455,84330.13%
    1-Jan-2024390,2071,978,99119.72%0.29%16,94457,63229.40%
    30-Dec-2024408,8402,042,97520.01%0.29%18,63363,98429.12%
    31-Dec-2025427,0042,107,08920.27%0.26%18,16464,11428.33%
    Total4.43%221,190808,04227.37%

    Notes:

    In October 2014 English Wikipedia had 1,445,021 biographical articles, according to a paper referenced on the project's main page. The number of biographies reported by Humaniki only caught up with this figure in 2017, which suggests that Humaniki information was incomplete until at least then.

    The September 2015 figure was reported here.

    The figure of 20% (408,183 women out of 2,040,570 biographies) was achieved in the 16 December 2024 update. TSventon (talk) 21:42, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

    Further background on metrics

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    As a result of figures presented by Humaniki, we keep posting on the main Women in Red page the percentage of women's biographies on the English version of Wikipedia. Increases are steady but marginal: for example from July 2022 to July 2023, the percentage has risen from around 19.3% to around 19.6%.

    Thanks to an analysis presented by Andrew Gray on the WIR talk page, it certainly looks as if the number of men and women involved in sports has a significant influence on the statistics for women. A detailed account of Gray's work is presented in "Gender and BLPs on Wikipedia, redux", which he published on 2 August 2023.

    The two lists below show that biographies of living people (BLPs) born in recent years are approximately 50% female if data on all categories of athletes are excluded. By contrast, the equivalent overall figures (including athletes) are only around 25%. As a result, biographies of very large numbers of male sportspeople seem to be responsible for the huge difference. Andrew Gray's detailed lists below document how figures for BLPs by year of birth have evolved over the years:

    Overall development of BLPs since the 1920s for all biographies

    • Missing birth year BLPs – 150,574, of which 53,355 female – 35.4%
    • 1920s birth BLPs – 5,096, of which 1,325 female – 26.0%
    • 1930s birth BLPs – 39,055, of which 7,086 female – 18.1%
    • 1940s birth BLPs – 95,602, of which 18,495 female – 19.3%
    • 1950s birth BLPs – 128,518, of which 27,172 female – 21.1%
    • 1960s birth BLPs – 145,300, of which 33,390 female – 23.0%
    • 1970s birth BLPs – 150,539, of which 37,893 female – 25.2%
    • 1980s birth BLPs – 171,072, of which 42,880 female – 25.1%
    • 1990s birth BLPs – 150,880, of which 36,944 female – 24.5%
    • 2000s birth BLPs – 30,042, of which 7,542 female – 25.1%

    Development of BLPs since the 1920s for biographies excluding athletes

    If we discount all athletes using the infobox method, the results are:

    • Missing birth year BLPs – 140,177, of which 51,021 female – 36.4%
    • 1920s birth BLPs – 4,321, of which 1,228 female – 28.4%
    • 1930s birth BLPs – 28,978, of which 6,161 female – 21.2%
    • 1940s birth BLPs – 73,095, of which 16,566 female – 22.7%
    • 1950s birth BLPs – 95,893, of which 23,644 female – 24.7%
    • 1960s birth BLPs – 96,175, of which 26,632 female – 27.8%
    • 1970s birth BLPs – 81,682, of which 27,562 female – 33.7%
    • 1980s birth BLPs – 58,078, of which 24,816 female – 42.7%
    • 1990s birth BLPs – 23,281, of which 11,754 female – 50.5%
    • 2000s birth BLPs – 2,850, of which 1,539 female – 54.0%


    Showcase

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    WiR is amazing and has way too much to showcase here.

    Recent Did You Know? blurbs

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    These are the 20 most recent WP:DYK entries for WiR. Updated approximately weekly by User:JL-Bot.

    • ... that Genghis Khan's daughter Qojin got married at 23, older than usual for a Mongol woman? (2026-06-06)
    • ... that Tulasi Srinivas wrote an ethnographic study of beauty parlours? (2026-06-05)
    • ... that Perrine Dugué's brutal murder and the rumoured miraculous healing powers of her grave led to the creation of a popular cult in 1796? (2026-06-04)
    • ... that Nellie Breen (pictured) is believed to have performed the first tap dance broadcast on radio in 1922? (2026-06-04)
    • ... that Meng Qingshu married Wang Ming only one day after she was released from prison? (2026-06-04)
    • ... that a university class inspired Else Went to write a five-hour-long play based on Dungeons & Dragons? (2026-06-03)
    • ... that French revolutionary Élisabeth Le Bas (pictured) declared that she would never accept a pension from her husband's "assassins", signing the statement with her own blood? (2026-05-31)
    • ... that a 1991 US postage stamp based on a print by Sabra Field sold more than 60 million copies? (2026-05-27)
    • ... that Eorcengota had a vision predicting her own death in which she was symbolically represented as a gold coin? (2026-05-24)
    • ... that an audit led by Gaynor Legall found that Wales had more than 200 commemorations of people linked to the slave trade? (2026-05-23)
    • ... that Alabama judge Helen Shores Lee's house was bombed twice within two weeks? (2026-05-21)
    • ... that Margaret Barker performed in a play with her friend Katharine Hepburn while they were students at Bryn Mawr College? (2026-05-20)
    • ... that Olympic diver and coach Aileen Allen was also an actress in silent films? (2026-05-19)
    • ... that Pamela Ball was prouder of her mathematics degrees than of being the first Jamaican woman to be a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England? (2026-05-17)
    • ... that Nancy Chitera (pictured) leads a university whose commercial subsidiaries plan to manufacture tractors and commence gold mining in Malawi? (2026-05-14)
    • ... that the French state was found guilty of negligence after the Thomas family murders? (2026-05-13)
    • ... that Yasuko Agawa was so sought after that she would sing at "five different jazz clubs in a single night"? (2026-05-09)
    • ... that Amanda Coulson (pictured) worked full-time as an emergency dispatcher during her career as an amateur boxer? (2026-05-09)
    • ... that György Kurtág dedicated his second opera, Die Stechardin, to his wife Márta and attended its premiere a day after turning 100? (2026-05-08)
    • ... that Manon Bannerman (pictured) thought that an invitation to audition for Katseye was a scam? (2026-05-07)

    Transcluding 20 of 3175 total

    Press

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    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

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    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 main subject (P921) = gender bias on Wikipedia (Q17002416).

    References

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    1. ↑ Graells-Garrido, Eduardo; Lalmas, Mounia; Menczer, Filippo (2015). "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media - HT '15: 165–174. arXiv:1502.02341. doi:10.1145/2700171.2791036. S2CID 1082360.
    2. ↑ "Qlever".
    3. ↑ "Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red • en.wikipedia.org". XTools.
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