We enjoyed this project which involved creative use of open tech for gender equality - just the sort of thing GreenNet likes best!
Women's Engineering Society were funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and worked with Wellcome Foundation to carry out this innovative project, celebrating 100 years of WES and aiming to increase recognition of women engineers. We were involved at an early stage to plan the technical proposal the and contribute to the funding bid.
We built a map that uses Wikidata to access live structured data from wikipedia to display new addtions of notable women engineers to Wikipedia, the map is searchable and pulls information and images featured on each pin from wikipedia. WES ran events and a comms campaign to encourage constributions.
WES has had many notable members with fascinating lives and careers, yet the only member who features widely in the popular historical narrative is pilot Amy Johnson. Our WES Centenary Map aims to help redress this, by showcasing new and improved Wikipedia entries about historical women engineers as pins on our map.
The Wikipedia and Wikidata entries the map is based on are being generated by volunteers, trained and engaged through Wikithons around the country, supported by research into the WES and other archives. We plan to have 200 map pins of historic WES members to explore by the end of the project in May 2020. The map is going to evolve over the lifespan of the project, pins will move to new places as the entries in Wikipedia and Wikidata change and evolve.
