Only 20% of Wikipedia Biographies Are About Women: This Effort Wants to Change That

Neil Armstrong wearing boots created by space seamstress Iola Allen (Photo – NASA)

Historically underrepresented in traditional history texts, women’s history suffers the same online. Only 20% of Wikipedia’s English language biographies are about women, according to the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, and they have a way for you to help increase it.

By Melanie Hooks

The Museum’s Discoverability Lab is hosting a series of Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons, including an all-day, worldwide event on Wednesday, February 11, for trained users. Free training is provided, and participants work to expand the heavily referenced online resource with well-sourced information about important female contributors to society.

Women added through these efforts include ILC Dover seamstress Iola Allen, who constructed multiple spacesuits for NASA programs, including the boots worn by astronaut Neil Armstrong during the moon landing; American financial advocate Emily Card, who helped orchestrate the 1974 passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; New York physician and suffragist Dr. Marion Craig Potter, a co-founder of the Medical Women’s National Association; and modernist Japanese American artist Mika Hayakawa, whose interwar work in the San Francisco Bay Area exemplified the region’s vibrancy and multiculturalism.

Visit the Museum’s website for instructions on how to get involved in this ongoing effort to help equalize one of the internet’s most heavily searched databases—and to elevate the achievements of women near and far.