WikiConference India 2011/Submissions/Bridging the Gender Gap

Timestamp

18:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Title of the submission

Bridging the Gender Gap

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, or presentation)

An interactive presentation

Author of the submission

Harshita Pande

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

Hpande

State of your origin (Country, if you are not based in India)

Mumbai, Maharashtra

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Thatz it - a digital agency

Personal homepage or blog

www.facebook.com/harshitap

Abstract (maximum 500 words)

Indian population has one entire section of well literate women with qualifications & degrees but no jobs. This may happen because of restrictions within the family, early marriage and/or devoted to bringing up their children. In our own social or family circle, there are a number of wise women whom we know as ‘housewives’. They don’t get any commercial opportunity to utilise their knowledge, they are at several occasions seen - teaching their kids or taking tuitions of kids from the neighbourhood or becoming school teachers. Infact there is a major shift in the gender of teachers in public schools towards women staff.

If we take Wikipedia (a free encyclopedia) it almost has as low as 13% women participation. In this presentation, we would be adding up the figures and build a connect within these women and wikipedia.

On studying a few women (housewives), from various age groups, from different cities, the following things are common in their internet activity:

1. They know how to check emails. Younger women also use online calendars, task schedulers and chatting
2. They know how to search on Google. Infact during searches only, they have found Wiki articles and know Wikipedia as an online portal.
3. They are on Facebook. Activity and no of friends may vary as per age, but they all know how to ‘make friends’ and how to ‘like’ things.

A few also have turned towards other social media like tweeting and blogging. What we need to do is add Wikipedia to their internet activity. The paper presents a few strategies to identify these women and introduce them to Wiki and encourage them towards continual contributions to Wiki articles. As the spread goes national, tapping this section of the society will open a lot of doors for regional language wikipedia.

Track (Community/Knowledge/Outreach/Technology)

Outreach

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