PhilWiki Community/WikiGap Campaign Philippines 2026

WikiGap Campaign in the Philippines is a community outreach initiated by PhilWiki Community during the celebration of international women's month and beyond. This year, WikiGap Campaign runs from March 8 to May 8 with the aim to bring about a more gender-equal internet – and a more gender-equal world. In a period of two (2) months, online and offline activities will be conducted focusing on building knowledge about women and related topics.

Since 2019 during the international women's month celebration, the Philippine Wikimedia Community has been organizing WikiGap Campaign in the Philippines to add more content to Wikipedia about women figures, experts and role models in various fields. The event continue during the year in several cities around the world run by the local Wikimedia affiliates. Find out more about WikiGap on: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiGap.

The #WikiGap campaign is a partnership between Wikimedia affiliates (previously with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs). It invites broad and diverse participation and allows for local adaptations to the overall theme of closing the gender gap and other gaps relevant for diversity on Wikipedia.

Background

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopedia. However, the information about women is less extensive than that of men because 90% of its contributors are men.

In March 2017, a sister edit-a-thon in four languages between the Swedish embassy in New Delhi and Stockholm was organized for International Women's day. The Swedish embassies in Pretoria and Washington DC then followed and hosted Wikipedia edit-a-thons with Wikimedia chapters.

Since then, the ministry has developed a tool kit for how embassies should organize Wikipedia edit-a-thons, and they are committed to surfacing the achievements of women in the world’s largest encyclopedia, in partnership with Wikimedia affiliates and other local organizations.

The PhilWiki Community joined the global gender equity campaign in 2019, focusing on translating and creating new LGBTQ and women-related articles, with two members ranking among the top international contributors.

In 2020, five participants each improved at least 30 articles and enhanced the visibility of women across seven Philippine languages: Bikol, Cebuano, Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, and Waray.

In 2021, in partnership with Developh Community, PhilWiki hosted a one-hour WikiGap livestream discussion to launch the campaign in the Philippines, introducing its initiatives and addressing key issues about Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement.

Through these efforts, the community continues to advocate for a more gender-equal internet and world.