At both the WEP conference and at Mirth Control at the end of the recent WOW festival Sandi Toksvig (co-founder of WEP) lamented at the absence of women in wikipedia’s ‘On This Day/Today’ feature.

Sandi explains that if you look at the Wikipedia page for any given day it will often feature a much smaller representation of events that involve women than men. For most days in history, there is often “nothing about women for 2,000 years – what were we doing, laughing whilst eating salad?”

She uses images of women knitting in the background during significant historical events to trace their often unrecorded contributions to them.

“In the midst of adversity, women managed to be both productive and creative.”

Sandi considers women to be “the greatest race of underdogs in history,” and often discuses the ways in which they have been sidelined even in movements for which they have fought the hardest. She…