Wikipedia makes no secret of its gender bias problem – in fact, there's a lengthy Wikipedia page dedicated to it.
"Gender bias on Wikipedia reflects the fact that a dominant majority of volunteer Wikipedia editors, particularly on the English-language site, are male," the page begins.
"This has led to Wikipedia having fewer and less extensive articles about women or topics important to women."
This gender bias is especially pronounced in its football pages, where just 3.5 percent of biographies relate to female players.
The current England men's national squad have a total of two-and-a-half times as many words devoted to them as the current England women's national squad.
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And all too predictably, the member of the women's squad with the longest and most detailed biog is... the Lionesses' male coach Phil Neville.
So as the FIFA Women's World Cup gets underway in France, adidas has teamed up with Wikimedia (the non-profit organisation which maintains Wikipedia) to launch a project designed to make a hefty dent in this gender imbalance.
The aim? With words and research from a team of female sports writers, identify and create biogs for over 200 women who are having a big impact on the sport, but don't currently feature on Wikipedia.
The project is already underway. Gail Newsham, the author of the first book about women's football to be written by a female football player, In a League of Their Own! the Dick, Kerr Ladies 1917-1965, tweeted on May 30th that she was en route to a Wikipedia "edit-athon".
On way to London for a Wikimedia Edit a thon supported by Adidas. They want more female footballers on their pages. Hopefully it'll be able to correct some mis-information while I'm there??⚽️ pic.twitter.com/cxBDRtrCPt
— Gail Newsham (@GailNewsham) May 30, 2019
“We know that girls are dropping out of sport at 1.5 times the rate of boys and one of the big drivers of that is the lack of visibility of female athletes,” said adidas's Nicole Vollebregt in a press statement.
“We firmly believe that ‘you need to see her to be her,’ so we decided to bring the history of women’s football to Wikipedia – and make a collective commitment to keep writing the inspiring stories of women’s sport and sportswomen as they happen.”
On Wikipedia overall, just 18 percent of biographies relate to women, so the gender bias on its football pages is really just the tip of the iceberg,
Lucy Crompton-Reid, CEO of Wikimedia UK, said of the football edit-athon: "We’re delighted to be partnering with adidas for this project, to shine a light on women footballers and their achievements.
“As the UK charity for the global Wikimedia movement we are well aware of the gender gap online – which reflects systemic bias and historical inequalities – and are working with a wide range of partners to increase the representation of women on Wikipedia."
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