The Women Special Interest Group of the Internet Society (Women SIG ISOC) is a young initiative, created in December 2017. It is comprised of five regional leads (Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America) and a Women SIG President. It is open to all individuals and organisations from any stakeholder group from across the world, who are working on issues concerning women and technology, and who wish to join the movement of breaking barriers when it comes to visibility of women in tech, active involvement and recognition of women and girls in tech, fight Violence Against Women and Girls through Information and communication technology (ICT), or any other challenges women and girls face today - in order to have a neutral and safe space for everyone, online and offline.
The ‘Global Editathon: Girls in ICT’ was the first event of this kind. Why did we organise the Editathon about women in tech? Hardly an event passes by that we do not hear about the lack of women in technology, the challenges of finding women for a panel. We rarely hear of women who contributed immensely in technology development. Yet, we know these women exist. The contributions of these women do not have the well deserved visibility on the Internet either. While acknowledging the ‘Fathers of the Internet’, we’ve decided to #ShineTheLight on ‘Women of the Net’, too! In the first stage of preparation we have invited the global community to submit names and information about women in tech that we know little or nothing about, and whose names are not on Wikipedia. We have also invited interested individuals to join as the Editathon’s editor.

https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2018/05/global-editathon-making-women-visible-in-ict/

• Africa
• Asia and Pacific
• Eastern Europe
• Latin America and the Caribbean
• Western Europe and North America

• Women

We were glad to see the interest around the Editathon increase day-by-day since we’ve published the initial idea. It went from having certain amount of individuals joining and contributing remotely, to having around 300 individuals working all day long remotely or by organising in-situ hubs. Despite the fact that the timeframe for organising hubs (finding space, ensuring Internet connection, covering organisational costs, and gathering people) was very tight, the number of hubs registration increased, resulting with the total number of eleven.

The project promotes a global neutral space that works towards the involvement of women and girls in technology and contributes to reducing the gender gap in the field.