Gender equity report 2018/Partnerships

Conversations with movement leaders

• Introduction
• Defining gender
• Inspiring change
• Best practices
• Barriers to equity
• Background
• Virtual community event

“ Centering marginalized communities and intersectional knowledge. Reaching out and having conversations with marginalized communities themselves. Having strong community organizers in those communities who can bring in more participants and scholars from their own communities. Working with communities to think about sources that really represented the knowledge of those communities. ”

Participants at a discussion day on Native American knowledge and Wikipedia

Partnerships are a powerful way to align Wikimedians with people that are experts in and passionate about gender equity issues. Interviewees emphasized that partnerships led to:

• More and better quality content that is relevant to the communities it is about
• Access to valuable sources
• More structured support systems
• More expansive and inclusive discussions
• Increased sense of solidarity, especially for Wikimedians without a strong gender equity editing community
• Greater visibility for their project through social media, radio, TV, and other channels

They spoke to the fact that identifying shared values, developing trust, and sharing power are all elements of a successful partnership and that the outcomes from the investment of time and energy to identify, set up, and manage a good partnership are worth the effort.

“ Off-line events are encouraging for people. They feel they make a difference in the movement. They want to see you again. Before we started the UN HerStory campaign, we had a big social media campaign to raise awareness of what we were doing. It made people proud to participate. It was psychological. It had a big impact on people. ”

“ Partnering with sororities has lead to more sustained editors -- they are more likely to return. Why? They have an embedded group they edit with. Sororities have an activist mentality to do service. Lots of young women are socially minded in terms of service. These women are not in a town where they can participate in big marches, etc. So this is a great option for them. ”

Participant at the UN HerStory editathon in Cairo, Egpyt

Partnerships come in all different forms, including universities, GLAMs, gender equity nonprofits, tech labs, national and international organizations. Some examples from our conversations:

• UN Women, HerStory Campaign
• Equality Labs
• Girls Coding in Kosovo
• Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, WikiGap
• African Women’s Development Fund
• Open Foundation West Africa
• Feminism in India
• Tor Vergata University for “Grammar and sexism” laboratory
• Uffizi Galleries & Advancing Women Artists Foundation (AWA)
• The Foundation in Africa
• Universitat Pompeu Fabra
• Moremi Initiative for Women’s Leadership in Africa
• Gimpa Law School
• University of Geneva

If you'd like to learn more about how to set up successful partnerships with marginalized communities, we recommend this learning pattern on Centering Marginalized Knowledge created by Whose Knowledge?.