Drive on Women in Philosophy: Aug-Dec 2016
The 2016 Women in Philosophy Drive, including the Kevin Gorman Memorial Edit-a-thon, is an effort put together by some Wikipedians in August 2016 under the auspices of the WikiProject Women in Red to create articles about women philosophers and women in philosophy, broadly construed. It has as its target the creation of 50 such articles by the end of 2016, but would welcome the creation of many more. All Wikipedians, female and male, old and new, with and without experience of the Women in Red project or philosophy, are warmly invited to contribute to the drive by adding their names to the list below and listing the articles that they have created, or else contributing to the articles created by others.
This drive has been created to continue the good work of, and in loving memory of, Kevin Gorman, a Wikipedian who hoped to one day create a WikiProject for women philosophers similar to WikiProject Women scientists. Kevin sadly died in 2016 (see "Kevin Gorman, who took on Wikipedia's gender gap and undisclosed paid advocacy, dies at 24", The Signpost, and "RIP Kevin Gorman, unsung advocate for women in philosophy", Feminist Philosophers). If the drive is a success, it could form the basis of a future WikiProject like the one Kevin imagined.
In Kevin's words:
Wikipedia has significant systemic bias; around 90% of our contributors our men. In a similar vein, philosophy as a field has significant systemic bias - women philosophers are less likely to be cited/written about/hold named professorships etc than their male compatriots are, even when they've made equally significant contributions to their field. Unfortunately, the bias of Wikipedia compounds the bias already found in philosophy. As a result, our coverage of women philosophers is horrible. Until recently [August 2013], there wasn't even an article about Alison Jaggar, a philosopher who taught the first feminist philosophy class ever. I know we can't (at least in a reasonable amount of time) correct this imbalance, but I do think we can at least mitigate it.
The Kevin Gorman Memorial Edit-a-thon took place on Saturday 8 October as part of the 201G WikiConference North America. For the purposes of the editathon, the theme was broadened from women in philosophy to under-represented groups, including women, in philosophy.