Jess Wade, a physicist at the Imperial College London, began writing Wikipedia entries that recognize female scientists. Her reasoning? Because they aren’t receiving the recognition they deserve.
Wade challenged herself for 2018 to write a piece a day about a woman in science. She says,
“In writing them, you get so inspired and excited because these people that you are researching … are absolutely incredible. It’s such a fun thing to do that you get motivated to keep contributing to science because you want to be one of these phenomenal people one day.”
She wants to help empower women in STEM. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, in 2016, only 17% of the biographies on Wikipedia were about women. If we specified to only female scientists, the number decreases even more. Wade felt that if she begins to write more Wikipedia articles, this could help boost the representation of women.
Wade said,
“When you look up a scientist, the first thing that comes up is their Wikipedia page. But more often than not, women don’t have them. I thought, ‘What could we do now to make sure that women are on an equal footing with men?’ and that’s where Wikipedia’s really useful. It costs nothing for me to write a Wikipedia article, other than maybe an hour or an hour and a half of my time.”
JESS WADE INSPIRES YOUNG GIRLS AND UNDER-REPRESENTED WOMEN
The physicist host various workshops and seminars to inspire girls who like science. According to Wade, she believes that the shortage of science teachers in schools and the lack of passionate teachers cause problems for young girls. She says,
“[Students] realize that they may not want to do this subject when it gets quite difficult or challenging. At school, they want to be really good, so they don’t choose to study the subjects. Then, they can’t choose that subject at university, … so we have this big skills gap in our country, and you have the same in America.”
She hopes to motivate women with her efforts. With her Wikipedia pages, she also tries to shine a light on under-represented women. Wade explains,
“That might be a woman, an African-American, an LGBTQ+-identifying scientist. It could be any of these people who so far haven’t been celebrated enough in the scientific community.”
The Wikimedia United Kingdom praised Wade in her work. They gave the following statement:
“Wikimedia UK applauds the work Dr. Jess Wade has done, not just to improve content on underrepresented women scientists on Wikipedia, but to do public outreach on this important issue.”
Featured Image via/ Imperial College London
