lgbtQ+@cam are delighted to welcome their new visiting research Fellow, Sandi Toksvig, to present her new project, the Mappa Mundi, a digital resource under development with the WOW festivals and Wikipedia to increase access to information about women’s position, activities, struggles and collective actions globally.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia which is written and maintained worldwide by volunteers was launched in 2001. By 2023 it has become the largest and most-read reference work ever written in the history of the world. It could be said to be a modern "Mappa Mundi" - an attempt to write down what the world is like now consisting of more than 61 million articles which are added to on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the gathering of knowledge suffers from deep bias. Only 17% of Wikipedia biographies are about women and this is not surprising, given that traditionally, the way the world is depicted has been via the male gaze: for English Wikipedia, 84.7% of contributors report their gender as male. For foreign language versions, it is 90%.

In addition, articles about women are, according to Wikipedia themselves, ‘less likely to be included, expanded, and detailed’. In general, female pages "tend to be more linked to men" and found to use sexist, loaded, or otherwise gendered language. Attempts to correct this bias have failed. The site set a goal of female editorship of 25% but back in 2015, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales admitted that it had so far proved impossible to meet this modest target.

Changing what exists is not the answer. Too many women are literally off the map. If we want to see how the other half live, then we need to start again.

MAPPA MUNDI with Sandi Toksvig