Show caption Hypatia, a Greek scholar from Alexandria in Egypt. Photograph: Ivy Close Images/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Female scholars are marginalised on Wikipedia because it's written by men Victoria Leonard I’m writing entries about celebrated female figures to make male-dominated online spaces more inclusive Wed 12 Dec 2018 02.00 EST Share on Facebook

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Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia edited collectively by a global community, arguably determines the narrative about who has power and influence in our world. It is the largest global source of information and the fifth most visited website in the world; the English-language Wikipedia had more than 7.7bn page views in October.

But Wikipedia has a gender bias that really bites: between 84-91% of editors are men. The vast majority of people who create this incredible knowledge resource come from a very narrow demographic. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, 83% of biographies on Wikipedia are about men.

Out of 1.5m biographies on Wikipedia, only 17.7% focus on women. That skew is even more apparent when it comes to classics: one Wikipedia editor estimated in 2016 that only 7% of biographies of classicists featured women.

What can we do? Like Jess Wade, a physicist and Wikipedia editor writing reams of pages for women in Stem, the Women’s Classical Committee is looking to counteract the stranglehold men exert over English-language Wikipedia.

We bring people of all genders together, in person and through online sessions, to create and improve pages for women in classics. These include pages for women archaeologists, art historians, theologians and philosophers. Through our edit-a-thons, volunteers working together have created or edited nearly 200 pages.

Wikipedia is a mirror that reflects society’s biases and prejudices back at us. Crunch the numbers and the dearth of women on Wikipedia is clear. But it’s not just about the visibility of women, it’s also about how they are represented. Only 20% of pages about women on Wikipedia feature images. How can you be it if you can’t see it?

Miriam Griffin, a classicist and tutor at the University of Oxford. Photograph: Somerville College

Women on Wikipedia are far more likely than men to feature information on their roles as mothers and wives, and far more likely to include negative descriptions. Miriam Griffin, classicist and tutor at the University of Oxford (1967-2002), was only mentioned on her husband’s page. Similarly for Annie Ure, the first curator of the Ure Museum, University of Reading, a position she held for 54 years. Google her, and the most you got was a page shared with Percy Ure. Professor Leslie Brubaker and Professor Gillian Clark were detailed as the wives of their notable husbands before they had independent pages created by our group, #WCCWiki.

Women have been marginalised and omitted throughout history, and this trend extends to those pioneering figures who were first to break through the ranks of universities as closely guarded male institutions in the 19th and 20th centuries.

#WCCWiki refuses to let these women be forgotten – women such as the trailblazer Dorothy Tarrant (1885-1973). She achieved first class honours in classics at the University of Cambridge, but like many women at the time was not awarded a degree. She became the first female professor of Greek in a UK university, the first female president of the Classical Association, and the first female president the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. The archaeologist Dorothy Garrod (1892-1968) was the first woman to hold a professorial chair at either Oxford or Cambridge universities, a position she held from 1938 to 1952. Kathleen Freeman (1897-1959) was a lecturer in Greek at what is now Cardiff University between 1919 and 1946, as well as being a prolific author of detective fiction.

Our labour doesn’t just advantage women, it isn’t just the concern of women, and it isn’t just the job of women. A more diverse editing population would help to broaden Wikipedia’s content, as the organisation that runs Wikipedia acknowledges. As Olivette Otele, the first black woman professor of history in a UK university, said of her promotion: “Any success that is used only to improve one’s own life is a waste of possibilities. That is why being the first black female history professor does not mean anything to me if I’m not given and can’t find means to bring others up.”

By illuminating positive female role models through initiatives such as #WCCWiki and the WikiProject Women In Red, we can make online spaces fairer and more inclusive, where women are allowed to succeed, and can be seen doing so. We just need a woke Wikipedia.