Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red

Community focused on overcoming systemic gender bias From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Welcome to Women in Red!

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Here:
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Reaching a milestone of 20% in December 2024, Women in Red changes notable women's representation on Wikipedia from red-linked obscurity to an encyclopedic presence.
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About

Welcome to Women in Red (WiR)! We are a group of volunteer (unpaid) editors of all genders who live around the world and belong to many different language and cultural communities. While our project extends over many language versions of Wikipedia, this page is principally devoted to our efforts on the English-language Wikipedia.

We focus on reducing systemic bias regarding gender representation (content gender gap) in the Wikipedia movement. Our goal is to "move the needle" in terms of statistical representation of women and other gender minorities on Wikipedia. We recognized a need for this work in 2014 when we learned that, as of October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia's biographies were about women.[1] Without a particular percentage in mind, we recognized that with persistence, we could increase it, one article at a time. With only this in mind, Women in Red was established in July 2015, at Wikimania Mexico City, by Roger Bamkin and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight.

Women in Red is a very large, on-wiki-based community thanks to you, the editors who participate in our work. Did you know that it is also the most active topic-based WikiProject by human changes? Join us!

20% milestone reached in mid-December 2024

See communication at 20% milestone

According to Humaniki, the percentage of women's biographies on the English Wikipedia is now over 20%: specifically reaching 20.003% by 16 December 2024. Using QLever, as of 14 March 2026, it had risen further to 20.32%. That means that of 2,119,863 biographies, only 430,722 are about women.[2] Not impressed? "Content gender gap" is a form of systemic bias, and WiR addresses it in a positive way through shared values.

Can we increase the percentage still further? Yes! But we need you in order to do so. How? There are more than 34,000 general forum comments from over 1,200 different editors on our talkpage.[3] Ask there. You don't have to be a member in order to participate in the conversations; just please be civil.

Do the articles have to be perfect when they are created? No. But establishing them according to Wikipedia's policies is the first step, and that's the focus of Women in Red: new article creation. Over time, other editors will improve these articles; maybe that's you.

Where the work is done

On Wikipedia

Our Wikipedia WikiProject focuses on creating content regarding women's biographies, women's works, and women's issues. Our editors create articles in many different language Wikipedias. The objective is to turn "redlinks" (like this one) into blue ones. That's why we are called "Women in Red".

We take an inclusive view towards subject matter, editors, and language communities:

  • Editors: We do not focus on the gender of the editor. Anyone/everyone is welcome to be a member, participant, enthusiast of Women in Red. If you participate in WiR, you can join up officially. You are also welcome to add our userbox template {{User WikiProject Women in Red}} to your user page, to produce:
    This user is a participant in WikiProject Women in Red
  • Language communities: While Women in Red began on English Wikipedia, it is an international commitment with dozens of other language communities. Please add a link to your language's coordination page here.
  • Subject matter:
    • If the subject of the article self-identifies as a woman, a non-binary person, and/or any other gender minority, that person is included within the scope of Women in Red. Historic cases where it's unknown how they self-identified also count. The goal of the project is to increase inclusion, and we'd rather not block article subjects from being included in an article creation drive.
    • In addition to creating new articles, we create and maintain hundreds of lists of "missing" notable women. Some of these women have an article on some language Wikipedia, while others have no article in any Wikipedia. We call these lists, "redlists".
    • Click on our Redlinks index to see our lists of missing articles by focus area, occupation and nationality. Like everything else on Wikipedia, this is incomplete, so feel free to add pertinent items to our crowd-sourced lists.
    • While all redlists have redlinks, our redlists are generated in numerous ways:

Wikimedia Commons

"Sue"

Every year, our members upload thousands of images to Wikimedia Commons: photographs of women, their signatures, their works, etc. In turn, these images can be added to Wikipedia articles. This is another way people can be involved in improving women's representation on Wikipedia. Over 10,000 new images were added in 2022.

Wikidata

We create and improve Wikidata items related to women, women's works, and women's issues.

Announcements

Please post recent announcements directly on this page for improved page editing history, watcher alerts and greater visibility

Add new announcements to the top. Sign with ~~~~. Remove old ones after a couple of months.

Events

For a complete list of events, visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Events.

Ongoing initiatives

  • 2026 year-long initiative: #1day1woman: 2026
  • 2026 year-long initiative: Sports

    • New for this month

    • March 2026: Alphabet run: Countries starting with C
    • March 2026: Artists+Activists
    • March 2026: Works by Women: Artworks

      • Recently completed

      • February 2026: Alphabet run: Countries starting with B
      • February 2026: Black women
      • February 2026: Works by Women: Opera, Theatre and Music

        • Upcoming events

        None to display.

        Lists of red links

        WiR works by filling in missing articles based on extensive lists of needed topics. The index to our wide range of topics and nationalities can be found at the Redlist index. Please make these red links blue. Notable women without a Wikipedia biography can be added to any crowd-sourced redlists they match; and added to wikidata such that they're included in wikidata-derived redlists. We also have a guide to adding names to redlists, and to creating new redlists.

        Article alerts

        See Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Women for articles about women that are nominated for deletion.
        This section is a transcluded subpage, and may contain more information than is shown here. To view or edit, go to /Article alerts (watch this section).
        Note: This report is based on the {{WIR}} banners of WikiProject Women in Red. If an article isn't listed here, first verify that it has one of those banners. If it has another women-related banner, like {{WikiProject Women}}, {{WikiProject Women's History}} or {{WikiProject Women scientists}}, look on those projects' article alert pages instead.

        Did you know

        (16 more...)

        Articles for deletion

        (81 more...)

        Proposed deletions

        • 08 Mar 2026 – 2024–25 Manisa F.K. season (talk · edit · hist) was PRODed by Microwave Anarchist (t · c): no useful content to article as is and no evidence of passing relevant notability criteria either, should the article be improved (WP:NSEASONS/WP:GNG)

        Categories for discussion

        Templates for discussion

        Redirects for discussion

        Good article nominees

        (6 more...)

        Peer reviews

        Requested moves

        Articles for creation

        (5 more...)

        Declined drafts

        Thanks firstly to Ronhjones, and now to Galobtter, we have a bot showing declined drafts submitted to AfC. Weekly updates highlight those most recently listed under New Additions. With a little bit of attention, some of them could well be moved to mainspace, encouraging the editors who created them to progress on Wikipedia.

        Resources and research

        WiR maintains resources to help you contribute, including lists of topical books and external links, information on editing in general, and contacts you can reach out to for specific needs. They can be found at Resources.

        Academic research on Wikipedia's content gender gap is also documented at Research.

        Metrics

        This section is a transcluded subpage, containing more information than is shown here. To view detailed month-by-month results or to edit, go to Metrics.

        About: additional details

        The articles created for any month, including the current month, can be displayed by clicking on one of the months in the archive box.

        We track the articles we create each month. Reports bot updates these lists automatically, but you can manually add and annotate entries. The bot will remove non-existent pages. More details about the bot. Our metrics talkpage is here: Metrics talkpage

        The evolving list for this month (see Archives box) is created by the bot which lists new women's biographies on the basis of their female gender on Wikidata. At present, the bot does not list women's works, associations or related articles but you are encouraged to add these to the list manually.

        The graph shows the number of articles created each month. The apparent decrease for the current month reflects the number of articles created up to today's date. Only data on completed months indicate overall progress.

        For personal metrics on how many articles you've created about women, see this tool.

        Wikidata

        A WiR Wikidata page provides information on how you can help ensure WiR metrics are up-to-date.

        Totals at a glance

        More information Year, Portion ifapplicable ...
        Year Portion if
        applicable        		 Total Daily
        average
        201518 Jul – 31 Dec11,71170
        201628,39977
        201728,27177
        201827,32375
        201927,20775
        202030,11982
        202126,78073
        202218,89352
        202317,92549
        202420,14255
        202518,85452
        Grand total255,624
        Close

        Updated: Rosiestep (talk) 23:49, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

        Summary of Women in Red statistics from main page

        More information Date, Women ...
        DateWomenBiosPercentageIncrease in
         % for year        		Increase
        in women
        for year        		Increase
        in bios
        for year        		Percentage
        for year
        30-Sep-2015205,8141,299,04715.84%
        1-Jan-2017240,4451,432,90716.78%0.94%34,631133,86025.87%
        1-Jan-2018262,0991,509,34817.37%0.58%21,65476,44128.33%
        31-Dec-2018279,9591,573,34117.79%0.43%17,86063,99327.91%
        30-Dec-2019305,0721,678,32318.18%0.38%25,113104,98223.92%
        11-Jan-2021332,6221,778,12618.71%0.53%27,55099,80327.60%
        3-Jan-2022356,4391,865,51619.11%0.40%23,81787,39027.25%
        2-Jan-2023373,2631,921,35919.43%0.32%16,82455,84330.13%
        1-Jan-2024390,2071,978,99119.72%0.29%16,94457,63229.40%
        30-Dec-2024408,8402,042,97520.01%0.29%18,63363,98429.12%
        31-Dec-2025427,0042,107,08920.27%0.26%18,16464,11428.33%
        Total4.43%221,190808,04227.37%
        Close

        Notes:

        In October 2014 English Wikipedia had 1,445,021 biographical articles, according to a paper referenced on the project's main page. The number of biographies reported by Humaniki only caught up with this figure in 2017, which suggests that Humaniki information was incomplete until at least then.

        The September 2015 figure was reported here.

        The figure of 20% (408,183 women out of 2,040,570 biographies) was achieved in the 16 December 2024 update. TSventon (talk) 21:42, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

        As a result of figures presented by Humaniki, we keep posting on the main Women in Red page the percentage of women's biographies on the English version of Wikipedia. Increases are steady but marginal: for example from July 2022 to July 2023, the percentage has risen from around 19.3% to around 19.6%.

        Further background on metrics

        Thanks to an analysis presented by Andrew Gray on the WIR talk page, it certainly looks as if the number of men and women involved in sports has a significant influence on the statistics for women. A detailed account of Gray's work is presented in "Gender and BLPs on Wikipedia, redux", which he published on 2 August 2023.

        The two lists below show that biographies of living people (BLPs) born in recent years are approximately 50% female if data on all categories of athletes are excluded. By contrast, the equivalent overall figures (including athletes) are only around 25%. As a result, biographies of very large numbers of male sportspeople seem to be responsible for the huge difference. Andrew Gray's detailed lists below document how figures for BLPs by year of birth have evolved over the years:

        Overall development of BLPs since the 1920s for all biographies

        • Missing birth year BLPs – 150,574, of which 53,355 female – 35.4%
        • 1920s birth BLPs – 5,096, of which 1,325 female – 26.0%
        • 1930s birth BLPs – 39,055, of which 7,086 female – 18.1%
        • 1940s birth BLPs – 95,602, of which 18,495 female – 19.3%
        • 1950s birth BLPs – 128,518, of which 27,172 female – 21.1%
        • 1960s birth BLPs – 145,300, of which 33,390 female – 23.0%
        • 1970s birth BLPs – 150,539, of which 37,893 female – 25.2%
        • 1980s birth BLPs – 171,072, of which 42,880 female – 25.1%
        • 1990s birth BLPs – 150,880, of which 36,944 female – 24.5%
        • 2000s birth BLPs – 30,042, of which 7,542 female – 25.1%

        Development of BLPs since the 1920s for biographies excluding athletes

        If we discount all athletes using the infobox method, the results are:

        • Missing birth year BLPs – 140,177, of which 51,021 female – 36.4%
        • 1920s birth BLPs – 4,321, of which 1,228 female – 28.4%
        • 1930s birth BLPs – 28,978, of which 6,161 female – 21.2%
        • 1940s birth BLPs – 73,095, of which 16,566 female – 22.7%
        • 1950s birth BLPs – 95,893, of which 23,644 female – 24.7%
        • 1960s birth BLPs – 96,175, of which 26,632 female – 27.8%
        • 1970s birth BLPs – 81,682, of which 27,562 female – 33.7%
        • 1980s birth BLPs – 58,078, of which 24,816 female – 42.7%
        • 1990s birth BLPs – 23,281, of which 11,754 female – 50.5%
        • 2000s birth BLPs – 2,850, of which 1,539 female – 54.0%


        Showcase

        See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Recognized content

        WiR is amazing and has way too much to showcase here.

        Recent Did You Know? blurbs

        Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/DYK

        These are the 20 most recent WP:DYK entries for WiR. Updated approximately weekly by User:JL-Bot.

        • ... that Go-Rilla Means War by Crystal Z Campbell was inspired by a kung fu judge? (2026-03-12)
        • ... that a painting by Adelaide Ironside modelled its depiction of Christ on the Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi? (2026-03-11)
        • ... that Valerie Pitt campaigned for the ordination of women by the Church of England for 25 years before wondering why any woman would want to be a priest? (2026-03-08)
        • ... that Carla Williams got into self-portraits in part due the to the poor representation of Black women in her photography history class? (2026-03-08)
        • ... that the Holocaust survivor Joan Salter returned from America to parents she could not remember? (2026-03-06)
        • ... that a teacher was fired for reading Dawn McMillan's book I Need a New Butt! to his second-grade class? (2026-03-04)
        • ... that British academic Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason quit her job to raise seven children and encouraged them to become musicians? (2026-03-03)
        • ... that in 2025, Liz Pelly published the book Mood Machine, a critical examination of Spotify including the platform's promotion of fake artists? (2026-03-02)
        • ... that, in Agnes Borinsky's queer interpretation of the Bible's Song of Songs, audience members placed offerings on a "shrine to the dead"? (2026-03-02)
        • ... that Mary Theresa Vidal began her writing career with a collection of Christian moral tales intended to educate convicts and servants? (2026-03-01)
        • ... that Thandiwe Abdullah created Black Lives Matter in Schools when she was 15 to help promote racial justice? (2026-02-27)
        • ... that orphaned Eliza Showell was sent to Nova Scotia from a British children's home and placed in indentured service? (2026-02-20)
        • ... that a thesis by Amelia Frank was cited by her doctoral advisor in his Nobel Prize speech more than forty years after her death? (2026-02-20)
        • ... that three members of the Hamburg Parliament—Mehria Ashuftah, Hila Latifi, and Zohra Mojadeddi—are Afghan refugees? (2026-02-18)
        • ... that Jacqueline Wilson said she quickly wrote her 101st book due to previously saying that she would die after publishing her 100th novel? (2026-02-18)
        • ... that Argelia Laya went from being a teacher to a communist guerrilla fighter? (2026-02-17)
        • ... that Dawn Hope's first episode on Hollyoaks featured an entirely Black cast? (2026-02-15)
        • ... that Liu Shasha didn't own a mobile phone because it might take away from her learning billiards? (2026-02-14)
        • ... that voice actor Rena Motomura prepared for an audition by practicing a single challenging line a hundred times a day? (2026-02-13)
        • ... that VTuber Sakamata Chloe used crowdsourcing for Christmas tree decorations? (2026-02-12)

        Transcluding 20 of 3095 total

        Press

        There has been considerable press coverage of WiR, to the point where the project has its own Wikipedia article. Below are some recent articles. To add articles to the list, visit Press.

        Academia

        In addition to listings under Research, academic papers on gender bias in Wikipedia (as recorded in Wikidata) are listed in Scholia.

        To include a paper, create an item about it on Wikidata (check first to avoid duplicates) and give it main subject (P921) = gender bias on Wikipedia (Q17002416).

        References

        External links

        Related Articles

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