Gender gap

Overview of the gender gap across Wikipedia editions in the CEE Region and options how this can be improved

The gender gap is a significant issue that Wikipedia aims to address through various initiatives. When we are saying gender gap, in the Wikimedia world that can mean two kind of gender gap:

Content gender gap, where more men than women are covered in the various Wikipedia editions and other wikis
Participation gender gap, where more men participant in the peer production communities of Wikimedia

One notable example to contribute to the content gender gap is WikiGap, a global campaign that has had a substantial impact on Wikimedia communities. Swedish embassies played a key role by securing venues, providing catering, and collaborating with external partners to supply resources for the events in the period from 2018 to 2023. This allowed Wikimedia affiliates' coordinators to focus primarily on organizing training sessions and workshops.

In this paper, CEE Hub tried to examine the gender gap in almost every Wikipedia edition of the CEE region, and the conclusion is that less than 18% of every biography Wikidata item connected with a Wikipedia article is about females. The six Central and Eastern European Wikipedias, specifically Bashkir, Gagauz, Lithuanian, Armenian, Georgian, and Macedonian, feature the highest proportion of female biographies, ranging from 23% to 25%. In contrast, the Wikipedias for Aromanian, Crimean Tatar, Chuvash, and Belarusian (Tarask) have the lowest representations, with female biographies constituting less than 13% of their total content.

There are several initiatives and networks within the global Wikimedia movement dedicated to addressing and bridging the gender gap.

At the end of the document, we tried to list what is needed to organise an in-person event and/or online challenge dedicated to the Gender gap.

Gender Gap by language editions in Wikimedia Projects in the CEE Region

Thanks to the tool Humaniki, we can assess the percentage of the female biographies per Wikipedia edition on a global level.

The latest update is from 23 June 2025.

Language	Total articles	Female articles	Female Percent
Albanian	18.966	4.122	21,734%
Armenian	68.180	16.959	24,874%
Aromanian	226	26	11,504%
Azerbaijani	42.521	8.713	20,491%
Bashkir	11.365	2.893	25,455%
Belarusian	48.673	8.435	17,330%
Belarusian (Taraškievica)	15.236	1.975	12,693%
Bosnian	9.952	2.263	22,739%
Bulgarian	90.699	15.649	17,254%
Chuvash	7.788	946	12,147%
Crimean Tatar	1.000	117	11,700%
Croatian	39.315	6.522	16,589%
Czech	159.065	29.270	18,401%
Estonian	61.498	12.275	19,960%
Gagauz	134	34	25,373%
Georgian	33.092	7.969	24,081%
Greek	73.988	14.641	19,788%
Hungarian	135.946	21.260	15,639%
Kazakh	25.076	3.523	14,049%
Latvian	32.645	5.596	17,142%
Lithuanian	25.267	6.359	18,031%
Macedonian	25.514	6.017	23,583%
Maltese	2.133	490	22,972%
Polish	437.347	76.339	17,455%
Romanian	78.840	16.309	20,686%
Russian	581.186	92.435	15,905%
Samogitian	1.261	233	18,477%
Serbian	62.332	12.383	19,866%
Serbo-Croatian	35.931	5.948	16,554%
Slovak	33.579	5.241	15,608%
Slovene	48.818	7.703	15,779%
Tatar	16.564	2.863	17,284%
Turkish	128.687	26.111	20,290%
Ukrainian	290.857	52.462	18,037%
Voro	523	85	16,252%
Western Armenian	4.238	659	15,550%
TOTAL	2.648.442	474.825	17,93%

Overall, the total female articles percentage is 17,93% in these CEE Wikipedias.

Networks and initiatives

There are several initiatives and campaigns with events on or around International Women’s Day. You can find a thorough list here.

Initiative	Description	Events
WikiGap	Events globally focusing on closing the gender gap on Wikipedia, by writing new articles about prominent women.	List of events
Women in Red	A WikiProject whose objective is to turn "redlinks" into blue ones within the project scope.	Visible Wiki Women/Art+Activism/Women in Africa
Art+Feminism	An international community that strives to close the information gap about gender, feminism, and the arts on the internet.	List of events
WikiDonne	Cross wikiprojects to increase diversity in content and participation (women, minorities and non- or underrepresented groups)
Wiki Loves Women	The annual contest Tell Us About Her – Women At Work to improve image descriptions. Add structured data to Wikimedia Commons thanks to a dedicated drive and the ISA Tool. Throughout March 2021.	Participate
Les sans pagEs	A French-speaking project focusing on reducing gender biases. In March, initiatives such as 150th Anniversary of the Paris Commune 1871 (with a list of women), TinnGO, Women and Science, Multimedia Library of Suresne Edit-a-thon, Unillustrated Women

Resources

Gender gap, this page seeks to act as a hub for resources and information about Wikimedia’s gender gaps, and to adequately quantify the gender gaps, in particular by presenting studies on the subject and by collecting anecdotal evidence about why women, LGBT+ people and underrepresented gender identity minorities leave or never join Wikipedia.
Humaniki - Humaniki provides a wide variety of gender gap statistics based on Wikidata.

Affiliate activities

Here is the incomplete list of affiliate activities regarding the Gender Gap initiative, which have a separate Meta page about these activities.

CEE Region
CEE Women Campaign 2026
Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova celebrated women with the third edition of WikiMărțișor - CEE Newsletter article
WikiGap 2023 in Ukrainian Wikipedia – 740 articles, progress for Ukrainian women in science and an opportunity to meet in-person - CEE Newsletter article
Shared Knowledge/Projects/Gender Gap editing weeks - editing week for Gender Gap
CEE Women subcontest during CEE Spring

Global

How to organise an in-person event?

To organise an in-person event (edit-a-thons) dedicated to the Gender gap initiative, you will need to do the following:

Please contact your local affiliate. If there is no active affiliate in your country, you may seek assistance from the Wikipedia community.

It is highly recommended to find a local organisation devoted to the topic (i.e. local NGOs dealing with gender related topics, female rights, feminism, etc.) and/or some external partner in your country
- This partnership can allow you to find participants, venues, and support in the organisation of the event.
- Additionally, these partners can contribute to the event with their staff members and/or monetary in the organisation.
You can ask for an external grant, Wikimedia Foundation grant (such as Rapid Funds), and/or CEE Hub microgrant to secure funds for your event.
Items that you need to take care of:
- Venue
- Internet connection
- Food and drinks
- Laptops/computers for participants (if they are not bringing their own or if the venue does not already have available equipment)
- Resources for the articles (typically best practice is to establish a list of individuals for whom they can begin a corresponding article, along with the associated resources)
- Trainer (volunteer from the community)
- Registration form for the event
  - Based on the responses, you can contact interested individuals to create user accounts on Wikipedia in advance of the event
It is highly recommended to organise an online challenge after your training on the some topic, so you can attract the newcomers to spend more time on Wikipedia
- You can provide some awards for this challenge.
Optional You can publish on Village Pump and/or Admin board that the event will be organised on a certain time and time, so the patrollers and admins will be notified that newcomers will create a lot of articles.

How to organise an online challenge?

To organise an online event dedicated to the Gender gap initiative, you will need to do the following:

You need a platform (Zoom, Google Meets, etc.), for which you can ask your local affiliate and/or CEE Hub to support you
You need an internet access/free data (in countries where internet access is expensive)
Optional You may invite some representatives to speak at the beginning of the webinar
You need a trainer from the Wikipedia community
It is highly recommended to organise an online challenge after your training on some topic, so you attract the newcomers to spend more time on Wikipedia
- You can provide some awards for this challenge.
Items that you need to take care:
- Registration form
- Link to the meeting
- List of articles