Type almost any question into a search engine and Wikipedia is the first answer you’ll see. Ask an AI chatbot and the odds are its knowledge has been scraped from those same pages – millions of times over. So here’s the problem: of Wikipedia’s 1.5 million biographical entries, fewer than one in five are about women.
It’s really time we change this. One way is by becoming a volunteer Wikipedia Editor, something I signed up for a few years ago. By doing this, you can help make a difference. Again, too few women are Wikipedia Editors, and maybe that goes part of the way to explaining the highly disproportionate lack of women being profiled on the site.
For Science Week, the Australian National University held a free workshop, ‘Inclusive Biographies in STEMM’, which brought Canberrans together to write and update Wikipedia entries for women and gender-diverse scientists. To showcase the researchers whose work has shaped science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine but whose names have never made it onto the world’s most-read encyclopaedia.
The mini wiki-hackathon was hosted by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU, in partnership with Wikimedia Australia.
Why the gap exists
Wikipedia doesn’t write itself. Its articles are created and maintained by volunteer editors, and the overwhelming majority of those editors are men. Layer that on top of centuries of women’s contributions to science and culture being overlooked, understated or credited to someone else, and the result is a reference source that quietly tells the world women weren’t there.
And because Wikipedia now feeds the large language models behind AI tools, that gap doesn’t stay on Wikipedia. It gets baked into the answers billions of people rely on every day.
How to help
You don’t need to be a scientist, or a coder, to edit Wikipedia – just a laptop, a reliable source and a woman whose story deserves to be told. Wikimedia Australia runs regular edit-a-thons and training sessions for new editors, and the ANU workshop is a model other cities could easily follow.
National Science Week 2026
Celebrating its 30th anniversary, National Science Week 2026 runs from 15–23 August under the theme “Seeds of Science: Nurturing Knowledge for All.” Featuring over 2,000 events nationwide, this year’s lineup places a strong emphasis on space, sustainability, diversity, and hands-on discovery.
Key Festival Highlights
- Inclusive Biographies in STEMM (Canberra): ANU and Wikimedia Australia host a wiki-hackathon to edit women and gender-diverse scientists into Wikipedia, tackling the platform’s gender gap and improving baseline AI training data.
- Seeds of Science – Space Seeds (Livestream): Follow Australian seeds sent to the International Space Station on Mission Sprouts with Swinburne’s Dr Sara Webb, featuring a message from astronaut and 2026 Australian of the Year, Katherine Bennell-Pegg.
- Lisa Harvey-Smith Live (Newcastle): The renowned astrophysicist headlines Newcastle’s program with insights into space exploration ahead of the Hunter Science Festival.
- Indigenous Science Experience (Sydney): A hands-on celebration showcasing native bees, bush foods, and Torres Strait Islander virtual reality guided by Elders and youth leaders.
- Under the Pavement (Barangaroo): An underground tour of Urban Green Sydney’s hydroponic farm, highlighting the future of urban agriculture beneath the city streets.
- Bubble, Boil, BANG! (Brisbane): Queensland Museum’s high-energy chemistry and physics showcase featuring rainbow flames and liquid nitrogen at $-196^\circ\text{C}$.
- Deaf Youth Science Camp: ANSTO and Deaf Youth Australia partner for a specialized four-day STEM camp tailored for deaf and hard-of-hearing youth.
- Science in the Swamp & Scrub (Sydney): Massive free family outdoor science festivals at Centennial Park and Western Sydney Parklands, expected to draw 18,000+ visitors.
- The Impact Factor: Matter of Origin (Sydney): University of Sydney’s new public event series exploring the origins of the universe and life on Earth.
- SCINEMA International Science Film Festival: A national series of screenings showcasing science features and short films in venues across Australia.
Details on the Acton event are at scienceweek.net.au.
