A collective effort for the Wikipedia pages of Institut Pasteur scientists

On February 7, 2025, the Institut Pasteur and the les sans pagEs association organized their very first Editathon – a collaborative workshop on the Wikipedia encyclopedia – dedicated to the Institut Pasteur's women scientists. The aim of this event was to bring the contribution of Institut Pasteur scientists out of the shadows by creating and expanding Wikipedia pages. A fine collective effort with tangible results: 2 pages created and 14 pages updated. We hope to continue this effort with the publication of new pages in the coming months.

Did you know that only 20% of Wikipedia biographies are dedicated to women? This was the rationale behind the Editathon dedicated to women scientists held on February 7. The goal of the event was to create and update Wiki pages ahead of the 10th International Day of Women and Girls in Science celebrated on February 11.

The workshop was co-organized by the Department of Communications and Public Affairs and the Department for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), with the invaluable support of the Scientific Information Resources Center (CeRIS).

Visible gender bias on the Wikipedia encyclopedia

The Editathon was held over an afternoon to improve the visibility of the work of the Institut Pasteur's female scientists and led by les sans pagEs, an association that tackles online gender inequality. After a historical introduction about the origins of Wikipedia, the association's president Natacha Rault recalled the main gender biases on the online encyclopedia, over and above the figure of 20% of biographies devoted to women already mentioned:

• We note that romantic and family relationships (wife of..., mother of...) are mentioned seven times more often for women than for men; women are also mentioned more often by their first name than by their last name.

• Only 10-20% of Wikipedia pages are edited by women. In addition, women scientists also suffer from the "Matilda effect", a form of denial leading to the spoliation or minimization of their contribution to research, and whose work is more easily attributed to their male colleagues.

Emblematic examples include Rosalind Franklin, whose work played a crucial role in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, and Marthe Gautier, who co-discovered trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, with Raymond Turpin. These situations lead to difficulties in finding secondary sources, descriptions of their lives, discoveries and works by third parties, that are needed to expand Wikipedia pages.

Live Wiki page editing during the Editathon

Some thirty volunteers from the Institut Pasteur improved, referenced and popularized existing Wikipedia pages or created new ones. Editathon participants had the opportunity to explore the resources of the Institut Pasteur's archives, in particular the work conducted over many years by Sandra Legout on the history of Institut Pasteur women (see seminar on the role of women in science, October 18, 2024).

However, they also came up against the difficulty of finding sources that would make many women eligible to create their own Wikipedia page. The main reasons for this were the low number of women in the Institut Pasteur's research laboratories in the first half of the twentieth century, and the structural difficulties women scientists faced in gaining access to positions of responsibility. Between 1952 and 1970, only seven women were heads of departments at the Institut Pasteur (representing between 2% and 6% of all department heads over this period), and it was only in the 1970s that women could become professors.

The collective effort produced tangible results despite the obstacles

The group of volunteers were unable to create or update all the pages they had originally considered. Far from it. Not only for lack of time, but also for lack of sources deemed valid by Wikipedia. We recall that Wiki criteria are imposed: see Wikipedia: Wiki article admissibility criteria for scientific & academic figures..

Together, we tried to be as accurate and efficient as possible, with sources clearly indicated, and with the invaluable help of the association that worked with us. There's still work to be done. That's why some pages are still in draft form as you can see.

Our tangible results:

2 articles of Institut Pasteur scientists were created:

• Odile Croissant (1923-2020), French biologist, physicist and electron microscopy specialist.
• Antonina Guelin (1904-1988), French physician and microbiologist.

14 articles of Institut Pasteur scientists were expanded.

•     Germaine Benoit (1901-1983), French chemical engineer, pharmacologist and Institut Pasteur biologist.
•     Berthe Kolochine-Erber (1890-1968), French Institut Pasteur bacteriologist.
•     Alice Dautry (1950-), French cell biology researcher and Institut Pasteur President from 2005 to 2013.
•     Christine Petit (1948-), physician and Institut Pasteur biology researcher specializing in human genetics.
•     Hélène Sparrow (1891-1970), Polish Institut Pasteur microbiologist renowned for her work on typhus control.
•     Société de pathologie exotique -update.
•     Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (1947-), French immunologist and virologist, specializing in retroviruses.
•     Anne-Marie Staub (1914-2012), French biochemist known for her contributions to the first antihistamines
•     Margaret Buckingham (1945-), Institut Pasteur molecular biologist, known for her contributions to developmental biology and cell differentiation.
•     Daisy Dussoix (1936-2014), molecular biologist and microbiologist.
•     Ágnes Ullmann (1927-2019), microbiology researcher known for her work on the regulation of gene expression in operon systems.
•     Marguerite Faure (1910-2007), French chemist and biologist.
•     Famille Lebaudy : link added to Amicie Lebaudy.
•     Amicie Lebaudy (1847-1917) : addition of a section on donations to the Institut Pasteur, addition of the photo of her bust (exhibited in the historical greenhouse), and addition to the list of sculptures of the Lucien Pallez.

6 articles of Institut Pasteur scientists which you can discover on the project page Les sans pagEs/Paris/Institut Pasteur are draft versions. Work on these pages is not yet finished and will continue. Some of the women described in the drafts are not eligible at this stage under the French Wikipedia criteria.

The quality and care taken in preparing this session were crucial to its success, and we would like to thank all the volunteers who took part in the Editathon. We hope to be able to organize other such events in the future, particularly in English.

The Editathon, a spontaneous initiative in a global context of declining women's rights and inclusion and equality policies

The idea for this collaborative workshop emerged in autumn 2024. Its rationale was naturally in line with the Institut Pasteur's desire to promote women in science and, more generally, diversity, equity and inclusion. The Editathon took place on February 7, 2025, on a voluntary basis, in a collective, fun and spontaneous effort, with a concern for truth and a desire to share a more inclusive and balanced narrative of the history of science in Wikipedia biographies.

Ironically, the defense of these values of equality and truth needs to be reaffirmed today more than ever, as a form of scientific resistance is emerging in the United States in a context where the new U.S. administration in power is threatening science, especially health research, and is particularly challenging DEI programs, including initiatives celebrating women in science, but also research into women's health issues. The Academy of Sciences has expressed its concern over these threats, recalling in passing that "DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) policies aim to encourage the social advancement of disadvantaged minorities."

Moreover, a collective of French personalities is calling for people to join the "Stand up for Science" movement and a day of mobilization today, March 7, to defend academic and scientific freedoms and reaffirm that "science is part of knowledge and essential to a democratic, inclusive and enlightened society".

See the opinion piece "Let's defend science against the new obscurantism".

With a collective of scientists, physicians and association representatives, our President Yasmine Belkaid co-signed an opinion piece in the newspaper Le Monde denouncing U.S. healthcare decisions [which] pose serious threats to progress and scientific cooperation and also highlighting "the censures that strike at the fundamental principles of equity, diversity and inclusion".

Crédit illustrations : Margaux Pailha EI