WikiWomen* Care Network Statement about harassment on the Wikimedia projects

Premise

Dear Wikimedians, The United Nations provided a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. In tune with them, welcoming, safety and inclusion actions within the Wikimedia communities, creating an Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) was discussed and rated inside the Diversity Working Group as the highest-priority initiative and considered crucial so much to become the third Movement Strategy 2030 recommendation Providing for safety and inclusion. Despite the UCoC provides a global baseline of acceptable (art. 2) and unacceptable (art. 3) behavior for the entire movement which avoids bias and prejudice, excludes any type of harassment, and help create “a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge”, we have often witnessed deserted discussions, a tendency to give local nuances based on cultural grounds, to belittle things that happened and to consider that harassment does not exist in the specific local community.

We often assisted on treating the gender gap projects as political/ideological, discriminatory, biased, considered non-neutral (with the consequential mistrust in the neutrality of those who work on it, declare themselves feminists or supporters for gender equality), not to be treated like other thematic projects, where notification (even manual) of the cancellation procedure related to articles object of the gender thematic projects is considered canvassing and is prevented, which limits a larger community participation.

Is also present hounding and targeting those working on the gender gap projects or sensitive topics, surveillance of pages where it is difficult to intervene (e.g. gender violence, violence against women, witnessed violence), with the result that a watered down version is presented, which does not represent reality.

Weaponization and targetization, the use of blocks as a strategy to decapitate gender gap projects, make the survival of affiliates risky, limit access to grants, hinder women from taking on admin roles, harassment based on gender identity etc.

Community Insights 2023 Report

At the Community Insights 2023 Report question about feeling unsafe or uncomfortable contributing to Wikimedia projects, "35% of active editors responded they had felt unsafe or uncomfortable contributing to Wikimedia projects at least once in the preceding 12 months": women (44%), gender diverse editors (53%), who preferred not to state their gender (45%) and men (33%). Regarding the experience of harassment in Wikimedia spaces, in 2022, "25% of active editors responded that they had been harassed in a Wikimedia space at least once in the 12 months preceding the survey": "women were more likely to respond that they had experienced harassment in the preceding 12 months (31%) compared to those who did not identify as women (24%)". See Fig. 14 and 15 bellow:

Figure 14. Percent of respondents who indicated feeling unsafe or uncomfortable in the 12 months preceding the survey, by gender.
Figure 15. Respondent experiences of harassment in the 12 months preceding the survey, by contributor role type.

Source: Community Insights 2023 Report & Creating Safe(r) and Inclusive spaces – WikiWomen Camp 2023, User:AAkhmedova (WMF), CC by SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Having taken note of the little support received from movement’s prepared entities (based on the principle of the autonomy of community processes), the stalling of the proposal for a Diversity Hub and the initiatives contained on the 3rd recommendation (private incident reporting, psychological support and conflict management etc.), during the WikiWomenCamp 2023 we talked about the need to give life to the WikiWomen* (WW*) Care Network. Which has as its objective, foreseen by the recommendations of the 2030 Strategy, also the creation of hotlines and a concrete network support in case of harassment.

Recognising the need to start a WW* Care Network

Extensive cases of mental and emotional harassment discussed at the sidelines of WikiWomenCamp 2023, in which there was little recourse to proper consultation available. Inadequacies of existing networks which are supposed to provide support to Wikimedians in need of support were discussed.

The need for a one-stop dedicated care network which will be there for anyone who requires assistance arose from the meeting. We recognised vulnerabilities across a spectrum of gender and sexual identities: with some individuals facing extreme forms of discrimination and violence because of them identifying with lesser known and understood forms of gender. We therefore need to identify problems in nomenclatures and embrace new definitions of gender coming from those who feel the most vulnerable. The identification of problems is fundamental to start thinking of solutions that this care network intends to provide to the larger knowledge community.

Highlighting the idea of moving beyond a binary system, we want to challenge the traditional gender participation on our projects and create welcoming spaces for everyone who identifies as a woman.

Camelia Boban (WikiDonne UG) on behalf of the WikiWomen* Care Network

Signed:

Camelia (talk) 17:31, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Bluerasberry (talk) 17:08, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Egezort (talk) 11:30, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ElleAnónime (talk) 11:34, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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Manavpreet Kaur (talk) 17:09, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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