CIS-A2K/Events/Women's History Month events in Maharashtra (March 2020)

CIS-A2K facilitated three thematic workshops with Marathi community & various organisations. The events were conducted on 5,6,7 & 8 March, in which 40+ women contributed on women's biographies, laws for women and climate change. Four books on women's issues were re-licensed and uploaded by Lek Ladki Abhiyan.

Background

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Many women editors from Maharashtra have become active in Marathi Wikipedia, Marathi Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons in the last three years. Some of them are leading gender based programmes in voluntary organisations. The discussions about the Women's history month events started from January 2020 and resulted into planning of various Wikimedia events with the initiative of these Wikimedians.

Objectives

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  • Bridging gender gap in participation as well as content in Wikimedia projects
  • To develop the leadership among women editors
  • To develop network of gender based organisations

Participants

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The first workshop was attended by 11 participants, second by 20 participants and third by 15 participants. All the participants were women.

Report

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As the organisations are working on thematic areas for more than 20+ years, they have knowledge repositories. The subject experts from these organisations guided the participants two weeks before the events to prepare articles in Google doc and curated them. The content generation on various aspects of Climate change was attempted. The categorisation was also discussed. The gaps regarding the biographies of women on Marathi Wikipedia were discussed and accordingly the notable persons were identified. The similar methodology was adopted for legal aspects regarding women.

Two organisations taken initiative to plan photo documentation on themes - 'Women at work' and 'Science & technology'. The women participants worked to bring diverse content on Wikimedia Commons.

The appeal was also made for the re-licensing of women related content. One organisation positively responded to this and uploaded reference books on Wikimedia Commons.

For more details, see the event pages on Marathi Wikipedia -

Online training and facilitation for the following events was done due to COVID-19 pandemic situation.

Follow-up

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These thematic organisations have decided to plan quarterly activity for content generation. The re-licensing of resources is also planned in this year.

Media Coverage

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