SHARINGACTION2019 Gender Meet up 2019/11/19/apunts/01

https://pad.femprocomuns.cat/sharingbcn2019gendermeetup

Gender Meet up

Sharing Cities Action Encounter Barcelona - 19-21 November 2019

http://www.sharingcitiesaction.net/encounter-2019/programme/

Collaborative notes at Teixidora.net, documentation to share and reuse.

Speakers Affiliation

Patricia Horrillos (Wikiesfera)

Noelia Igareda (Antigona)

Yolanda del Olmo (Dones Visuals)

Mireia Sierra (El Risell)

Madish (X-NET)

Maite Ramos (RLadies)

Conference notes

We need data to justify or to make ourselves questions about why a gender perspective is needed.

How can wikipedia manage digital rights and privacy?

Virginia Diez (Wikimedia Spain) -  First of all, I am here representing wikimedia, which is an organization; I am not representing wikipedia as a community, because it is much wider. I have some data, but it is important to know that we are talking about different language versions and not specific territories.

It's important to talk about participaiton in general in wikipedia, before talking about gender bias in wikipedia. Wikipedia has transformed and enabled a collaborative and active process of knowledge production, something that the community is very proud about. This is what has made it the 5th most visited website in the world. it's because there are thousands of people producing knowledge. About wikipedia in spanish, there are x? entries at the moment. 650k edits per month, which means wikipedia edits more or less 14 times a minute.

When we talk about data in wikipedia we talk about a particular approach: it is a non-profit platform, we're not making money out of data, and we collect fewer amount of data than other platforms. IN terms of gender bias it is a challenge for the wikipedia community to address it, to find exact data. You can edit in wikipedia w/o even having an account. One edit can mean someone entering a small edit in a page or someone entering a 2000 word entry.

The way we have to identify gender in individual contributions and editing in wikipedia is that when you create an account you get the opportunity, after having a registered account, to decide whether you want to state your gender identity or not. 23% of women in wikipedia. According to different interviews at global level some of these users are not identifying themselves with women because they are subject to more harrassment. In 2011 at a global level women represented only 10% of the community, so it is getting better. NO we are getting more resources and policies to make a change, but still it is a low percentage. Yet, this does not mean that those who do not identify as women are 79% men, they might not want to be identified as women. The estimation we try to say we should have between 30 and 50% women.

How does the community self regulate regarding gender perspectives? In terms of action and managment? To close the gender gap?

Virginia - In the wikimedia foundation both president and ceo are women, so we are seeing a change in the sense that we see women in power positions, this is something which is helping change policies. Then are affiliates around the world who are taking action and setting up debates about how to address gender persepctive, such as edit-a-thons to make women more represented in wikipedia. There are two strands: the policy side, aiming to change the structures, policies and organizational strategies that are preventing us from achieving our mission, which is that all human beings have access to knowledge. we want to enable everybody to participate and contribute. Also, analyse and give recommendation at the community level how the wikipedia community interact with each other. The community is amazing but the rules that would work 18 years ago might not be valid or funcitonal anymore.

How do you broaden participation? In practice? How do you decide? Do you vote?

Virginia - If the community of wikipedia who is going to vote, and to have the opportunity to vote you need a minimum number of edits (like 20) and you need to go to the discussion forum where these decisions are taken, and sometimes the discussion forums are places where moderation is not always easy, a certain culture is being enforced, and some unequalities might be reproduced.

there was a report with 75 interviews with women around the movement, women who were active and participated, asking what prevents them from being more active? 40% of women surveyd stated that the discussion space within the platform is a hostile environment. We have an informal Telegram group for women in latin america, and it feels like a safe space.

Focus on why there is less content about women in wikipedia? First, if media and researchers dont write about women, it makes it difficult for us to add content about women to wikipedia. One of the things, apart from social biases which are structural and reflects the physical world, there is also a lot of articles deleted: more women articles are deleted than male-edited articles. we did an experiment to see how many of new articles about women were deleted, focusing on the biographical articles over 10 months (in spain) they found out that the problem is that female articles are not created compared to female articles, whereas the deletion of articles is similar across genders. There are thousands of articles about all male football players, but if you write an article about a woman swimmer, she is not there, in the lists of athletes, etc. the problem is that there are no articles about women.

It is like a cycle, the more male biographies are created, the higher male searches.

Any action implemented as an organization to increment women content?

Virginia - Diversity program that led to 35 edidathon in spain working with different institutions to promote women participation within the community, and to circumvent the impostor syndrome. Most of the times these actions aim at increasing women biographies or women-related content in wikipedia, e.g.: women in science and in tech. In one event of 6 hours we had 30 more articles created. Yet, it is not only about creating articles because creating articles from scratch is a bit challenging, so we are working and interacting with the community at the event w/o necessarily striving for content editing. There is a code of conduct, to create a safe space (both online and offline) for editing. the problem is that the code of conduct is there, but people do not know how to tackle this code of conduct, and eventually are not trained to react when something happens.

At the moment: gender neutral language.

// LIGHTING TALKS

1. El Venadito (quien?) - es importante educar a los niños a la inclusividad y a la igualdad

2. ViquidonesUPF (Ester Bonet) - editar en wikipedia es un espacio de guerrilla, porque te echan fuera en el espacio de un minuto. Enseñamos a editar pero tambien a rescatar biografias existentes. Especialmente a contenido del tipo: "ella era la mujer de.." "ella era la amante de..."La vida personal de las mujeres es lo que siempre sale. Rescatar todas a las mujeres que consiguieron logros pero el cuyo logro fue englobado por un/su hombre. Si hacemos este trabajo de abrirnos construimos este espacio de guerrilla, porque no tenemos  plan b, si no cambiamos la historia desde wikipedia nadie lo hara para nosotras.

[english]: Revising biographies of women to exclude expressions such as "she was the wife of...", "she was influenced by...", "she was the mother of...". We teach to dialogue in this online world dominated by men, we have a safe space to talk and search for solutions.

3. BCN Open Data (Lourde Muñoz - IOPB) - uso social y ciudadano de los dados abiertos. Falta de incorporacion de datasets abiertos que traten de problemas fundamentales que reflejan las desigualdades de genero. Si estos datos no esta, los algoritmos seran biaixiados.

Derecho a saber con genero.

iCuida - trabajos con mujeres de barrio para decidir las especificaciones de las app que ayuden a las mujeres cuidadora a gesitonar su vida economica

Debates sobre violencia de genero: una de las mejoras aportaciones es poner datos sobre la mesa

Sino hay igualdad en los dados dificilmente se construiran politicas publicas de igualdad

[english] we want to help social initiatives, public or private, so that they can use data. we focus in the social, citizen use of data. one of the most important data is gender, data with a gender perspective. first because of the lack of sources. second because the desagregated data

how to do it? 3 projects:

- app iCuida, social inclusion, social innovation; barrios women that help care takers  to improve their labour.

- open data for equality: data expedition, virtual exposition

- open data observatory and gender: CIBA Gender Lab observatoriodatosabiertos.org compilation of public open data. non existing, non published data.

- gender violence data (and public resources in Spain): datosviolenciamujeres.es

"if there is no data equality, there will be no public policies for equality"

4. GeoChicas (Jessica Sena by VIDEO)

Based on Open Street Maps, with over 1 million users. Only 3% are women, there is a data gap.

Geochicas aims at increasing these stats, fight the data gap, empower women. How?

- mapping and tagging women facilities

- #The Streets ofWomen, a world map that highlights the streets with names of men and women.

contacts: geochicasosm.typeform.com + osmstats.neis-one.org + geochicas.org + @jsenag + @geochicasOSM

5. Codebar (Raquel Alvear)

- aim: bring diversity n the IT world, teach how to program.

non profit initiative aimed at bringing diversity into the IT world, coding more accessible. main goal: enable underrepresented groups to learn how to code in a safe environment and safe space.

free workshops every week in BCN, slack community. it started in the UK and has spread around the world; 15k members in the community.

in bcn th workshops take place in different communities; mentors volunteers.

only in bcn, +400 members logged in the platform, 200 coaches/volunteers, 60 workshops in the city, 17 sponsors (Companies who host the workshops).

contacts: codebar.io, barcelona@codebar.io, slack.codebar.io

6. Calala women's fund (Laura Rosillo)

- women's fund mobilizing resources for feminist movements and collectives. legal and fnundraising support.  develop a comprehensive definition of what it is gender violence online. Whatsapp, twitter and facebook are amongst the most aggressive platforms for feminist activism and that the typical aggressor is white well educated western heterosexual male

women's fund based on the idea that the feminist movement needs funds at the grassroots level.

in calala we work in central america, decriminalization of abortion, in spain about strengthning the feminist movement with a focus on migrant women.

activismo-seguro.calala.org > open call due 31st december to protect and strengthen the feminist movement. working with red maya.

lab.pikaramagazine.com > we also work on gender based violence online

7. Grassroot Economic Organizing (Malikia Johnson)

- promoting coops and the solidarity economy.

Catalyzing worker co-ops and the solidarity economy. A grassroots economic organizing collective, a media collective reporting on everything workers cooperatives... i participated last years in the "take care of each other" world tour, about sustainable visions for the future, where interviewed architects, ...

8. ARS games (Luca Carrubba)

- use videogames as a design tool and space of conflict to promote change. Videogames are historically machists and a strong male-oriented industry. Understand videogames not only like a product but rather a media space. It is important for men to be in the debate about gender inequality because itis not only a female issue but it is especially a male issue

small organization, based in spain, bcn+madrid, and mexico. work in the crossroads between education and training, research and innovation, citizen participation, and gamification for social change. to use video games as a design tool as a space to foster social change. in our statutes we are 2 men and 2 women, that's the main structure. never will be more men than women. we work with video games we're trying to bring a feminist perspective into video games and also technology. the final goal is to bring diversity to this medium. we think video games are the most important media of our times. in december we will have a local meeting about women and video games, to try to create a bigger comunity of activists, researchers. all of this we will bring next year to a publication of a book we're starting. usually my colleague euridice gives the talks but we also think it is important that men participate in these spaces, because it is an issue of everyone.

9. CodeOP (codeop.tech) Yessica Gonzalez

 - especially women and underrepresented groups in tech have the idea that tech is not for them, but you can change carrers path in even 11 weeks intensive if you just put some effort

- international organization to teach coding.  normally javascript, but also sql, php, etc. many women give up on learning how to code, but we want to show you that it is possible to change careers in 11 weeks. showed a youtube video: CodeOp_Testimonial_V6.1.mp4

10. Digital Fems (Thais)

- floss communities reproduce the gender gap issue. WHen we talk about gender and when we talk about tech and we want to understand where the gap is, when we talk about FLOSS the gender gap reduces. If the goal is to achieve active participation of all members of the communities. Every single entity who is part of the community is gonna participate in how to build the software

Challenging the gender gap. FLOSS communities reproduce the gender gap issue: there is a low gender presence, there is low gender participation. when we talk about gender, when talking about proprietary software, there is 70% men and 30% women. in FLOSS these reduces to 2-3%! We want women to participate freely, without imposter syndrome. The plan is to get more women to participate in FLOSS communities. strategic plan to close gender gap from a coding perspective, within the decidim software development project.