Ditchling museum will hold Wikipedia-editing sessions to redress gender imbalance
Elizabeth Peacock (left). Photograph: Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts
The crafts industry has become the latest sector to attempt to tackle the internet’s gender imbalance, after a museum warned the legacy of the UK’s most important craftswomen is at risk of being forgotten.
Ditchling Museum of Art and
Craft is to hold a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons in June. It open its doors to volunteers who will be taught how to create and edit Wikipedia pages to include significant 20th-century craftswomen. The edit-a-thon is one of hundreds taking place around the world aiming to mitigate the lack of information about women online.
Abby Butcher, communications manager at Ditchling museum, says craftswomen are “undoubtedly” at risk of being forgotten and suffer from gender bias that sees male artists such as
Eric Gill dominate discussions of crafts history.
“It’s the usual factors you’d expect: they’re women and they were working in the early 20th century, and there were a lot of male craftspeople who were dominating that scene. That’s the obvious patriarchy argument,” says Butcher, who believes the situation is exacerbated by the fact that less than 10% of Wikipedia editors are women.
“The story of Ditchling is dominated by Eric Gill because he was such a big figure but there are a lot of hidden stories. You can trace the impact that a lot of these lesser-known artists have had across the arts and craft movement – there’s this lineage.”
The museum is holding two edit-a-thons, which have become popular ways for groups to tackle the dearth of female figures on Wikipedia pages in areas such as
science and
museum curation, on 1 June. Butcher believes for the younger generation, the internet is a vital research tool and if artists don’t have a presence, they can quickly become obsolete.
“So much important history is in out-of-print books or in people’s heads so it’s great we have the chance to get that down,” she said. “I think there’s a risk with Generation Z that if it isn’t online, it doesn’t count.