To coincide with International Women’s Day on Sunday 8 March, the University of Divinity is officially launching the Australian Women in Religion Project.
The 1000 Women in Religion Project, a major initiative of the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature’s Women’s Caucus, is working to add biographies to Wikipedia, where over 80% of biographical entries are currently about men. The University of Divinity is taking a lead role in coordinating an Australian contribution to this international project. Together our goal is to create 100 new Wikipedia entries for Australian women in religion in 2020, in addition to updating and improving already-published articles.
About the project
The “1000 Women in Religion Project’ is a timely endeavor that seeks to add over 1,000 names and contributions of religious, spiritual and wisdom women to Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the world. The contributions of women in all fields of work, scholarship and life, including religion and spirituality, have gone universally under-recognized, across time and in our present-day context. Furthermore, this under-recognition, which is a form of gender bias, is reflected and reproduced in our commonly used sources of knowledge – in our history books, in our news media, even in our sacred texts. In this present day and age, when these sources of knowledge are available with a simple click on our mobile devices, we are formed by these gender biases in knowledge production, 24-7.
More about 1000 Women in Religion ProjectHow can you participate?
- Become an editor
- Attend or support our University of Divinity Edit-a-thon on 24 April
- Suggest a woman (historical or contemporary) for the 1000 Women in Religion list
Read more about the Australian contribution, lead by a collaborative initiative of the Univeristy of Divinity, here:
More about the Australian contribution
Kerrie Burn is the Library Manager at Mannix Library in East Melbourne. While primarily serving the needs of staff and students of Catholic Theological College, Mannix Library welcomes all members of the University of Divinity community. Kerrie manages the University’s online Library Hub, which was launched in February 2016.
University of Divinity
Pilgrim Theological College
St Francis College
Wellspring Centre
What a great initiative by the Australian cohort to work with all of us with the 1000 Women in Religion Project to address gender bias on Wikipedia! We hope to accomplish a lot together!! And we hope for great representation of Australian Women in religion on Wikipedia!!