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CIS-A2K/Research/Mapping Repositories on Gender and Sexuality in Indian Languages - A Short Update

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The study on Mapping Repositories on Gender and Sexuality in Indian Languages is part of a series of research projects undertaken by the Access to Knowledge programme at the Centre for Internet and Society in 2021-22.

Over the last decade, communities across the world have identified disparities in terms of content and participation in Wikimedia projects across diverse gender and sexual identities. In acknowledging and addressing this gender bias, various initiatives in content creation, participation, training and outreach have been undertaken by communities globally, in various languages. In the Indian context as well, there have been significant efforts related to bridging the gender gap on Wikimedia projects. Earlier research undertaken at CIS-A2K on the gender gap in Indian language Wikimedia communities highlighted some important aspects. Lannon (2014) notes how work in this space has been predominantly located in Western contexts, and challenges faced by Indian women contributors are unique and need appropriate strategies to address the same. Chang (2018) illustrates how Indian women Wikimedians negotiate their identity and agency within male-dominant communities, and how the learnings from here resonate with the larger Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) discourse. The most recent work by Koteeswaran (2021) provided deeper insights into women’s online and offline participation in Wikimedia projects and means to improve and sustain the same. The previous research studies also provide several recommendations on addressing the problem of gender gap, including through training and capacity-building, improving community health, encouraging women in leadership positions and according to recognition for their efforts.

The present project is in continuation of this research to understand how the gender gap determines and regulates the process of content creation and participation on Indian Wikimedia projects - online and offline. However, this study does not exclusively focus on the Wikimedia communities, but on various other digital platforms working on gender, sexuality and feminism. In doing so, it aims to understand challenges and opportunities in the creation of content on these topics, their digital documentation, and how it may inform the growth of open access platforms such as Wikimedia projects. The primary focus of this research is as follows:

  • To map disparities in content on gender, feminism and sexuality in Indian languages, while we seek to understand how these gaps effect content creation on Indian language Wikimedia projects.
  • To map knowledge repositories available with individuals and institutions working on gender, feminism and sexuality, with a focus on women, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ related content.
  • To collate the potential ways of overcoming these difficulties that emerge from gender gap in content creation and access to open knowledge, as recommended by the stakeholders of the digital world.


The first few months of this study were spent on finalising the research design, including the primary research questions. This comprised several steps such as reviewing the existing literature in this area, including work on Wikimedia projects, through the formulation of a bibliography. Throughout the process of review, various facets of the digital ecosystem, gender gap and feminist interventions were noted as key points to help navigate through and finalise the primary research questions. Gathering primary resources on content related to gender, sexuality and feminism in Indian languages is an ongoing challenge, especially given that such literature may not be digitised or easily available in the public domain. The process has also helped identify knowledge gaps related significant areas of work such as feminist knowledge production, and research, creative and activist interventions in Indian languages online. This research is therefore an attempt to map some of these aspects through conversations with key stakeholders, including organisations and individuals working in this space. A persistent shortcoming observed in the existing literature is the homogeneous category of ‘Indian women’, which negates or invisiblises the social and economic realities of these ‘women’ primarily determined by caste, class, region, educational background etc. Thereby, before identifying the potential participants of this study, a conscious political choice was made to break the binary understanding of ‘Indian women’ and ensure our cohort of participants were diverse in terms of gender and sexual identities, caste, region, and educational background. For instance, there have been consistent efforts to reach out to Dalit, Adivasi and queer feminist knowledge/ content producers, including organisations working in this space.

The question of linguistic barriers is central to this research study, and from a methodological perspective important in terms of mapping content in Indian languages. Given the limited time and scope of the project, it was decided to adopt a mix of convenience sampling and snowball sampling methods, and focus on languages where the researcher is proficient (in terms of being able to engage with potential respondents and content in Indian languages), and able to tap into existing networks of the team in various communities. Hence the study currently focuses on organisations and individuals working in Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu, many of whom are also multilingual and produce content in English. This process was followed by finalising a set of data collection methods that would offer the best ways to capture nuanced, qualitative data on the research topic. Methods such as semi-structured interviews, focused group discussions, etc., were selected, also keeping in mind their feasibility in the present scenario given the ongoing pandemic. Furthermore, while we considered both individuals and organisations, the category of content producers is further subdivided to comprise areas of work such as curators, educators, artists, writers, translators and publishers. This is in order to gather insights on content production and curation in different sectors and formats, and challenges with online spaces and access, which would offer important learnings for diverse Wikimedia projects. A semi-structured questionnaire for each of these subcategories has been formulated, and data collection has just been initiated through conversations with the first cohort of participants. Even as the research interviews are well underway, the conversations have offered us interesting and informative insights on the research questions, and encouraged a constant process of review of the data collection process itself. The continued process of reviewing and drafting the literature review has also helped build on the research questions, identify related areas of work and look at potential ways to expand the scope of the study. This has led to interesting learnings on the research process itself, especially in terms of identifying challenges in the research design. Over the next couple of months we look to complete data collection, and gather these learnings in a final report to be shared later this year.

References

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Same Gap, Different Experiences. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
Bridging the Hidden Gap. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
Bridging the Gender Gap. Retrieved January 25, 2022.

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