WikiGap has brought us 27 000 articles closer to a gender-equal internet

Last year, the first major WikiGap initiative was carried out at some 50 missions abroad around the world. WikiGap has now spread beyond the Swedish Foreign Service and generated more than 27 000 new and expanded Wikipedia articles on prominent women in various fields. Meet one of the most productive editors: Andriy Hrytsenko from Ukraine.

The WikiGap Challenge was launched on International Women’s Day 2019. The competition, which involved increasing women’s representation on Wikipedia, now has a winner: Andriy Hrytsenko from Ukraine, a university lecturer in education who is passionate about gender equality and wants to help correct the imbalance on Wikipedia.

– Of course, I didn’t think I would win. I wrote and translated articles about women and during the first few days I was doing well in the competition. That’s when I became inspired and even more competitive” says Andriy Hrytsenko.

Andriy Hyrtsenko believes that gender equality is without a doubt one of the most important issues in society:

– The issue hasn’t received enough attention.  There are few women politicians, researchers and writers, so consequently there are not enough articles about women on Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors are mostly men writing about other men, and that’s why the imbalance gets worse. Competitions like this are needed to correct the imbalance,” he says.

Andriy Hrytsenko’s winning result during the month in which the competition took place was a total of 353 articles.

– It was interesting for me to find out more about the prominent women I wrote about, including actors, writers and athletes,” he adds.

He is now looking forward to Wikimania 2019, a large Wikipedia event due to take place in Stockholm. Wikipedia editors from all around the world will meet there and Andriy Hrytsenko promises to continue writing about women on Wikipedia to create an even better balance.

Check out the short film on Wikigap 2019 here!