From May 23 to May 25, around twenty women from the worldwide Wikimedia movement attended WikiWomenCamp in Buenos Aires, to explore challenges facing women who contribute to the free knowledge movement, and to discuss opportunities to actively support the spread of free knowledge by communicating how successful strategies can be applied to outreach in different countries and cultures.

In the wider Wikimedia community, there is a perception of a big gender gap for female participation on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The problem of low female participation extends to activities outside the wikis as well. As a member of the community, I’ve seen this first hand: At meetups, I’ve been one of few women to have participated. On movement related mailing lists, women are often far outnumbered by men. Many chapter boards have no female members.

Three of the organizers of WikiWomenCamp: Beria, Laura and Beatriz

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