WriteHerIn is a campaign to make sure women get credit for their ideas and work.
Her research, her headline. She explained it, her name is on the slide. Her code, her name in the release notes. Her recipe, her name on the menu. Write her in.
Photo: Web Summit, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe problem
Women’s ideas get recorded under other people’s names, or under no name, in meetings, papers and reviews, and over the years that holds their careers back.
Understand the problem
Photo: National Assembly for Wales from Wales, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsTake part
Start with two habits, a three-question test and a five-day challenge.
Start with one name
Photo: National Assembly for Wales from Wales, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsFor organisations
One line on your review forms, and a 60-minute session that fixes your own records.
See what to do first
Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe Credit Map
Log something real you did to credit her. Once she confirms it, her pin turns solid.
Open the Credit MapIt has a name: hepeating.
Saying her name first takes about three seconds, and it means the minutes record the idea as hers.
Who gets credit affects who gets promoted, published, invited back and paid, and study after study finds that women get less of it.
less likely to be named as an author on a research paper, for women doing comparable work to men.Ross et al., Nature, 2022
less likely to be named on a patent.Ross et al., Nature, 2022
of the people heard or seen in the news are women, and the figure has barely moved in a decade.Global Media Monitoring Project, 2025
Historians call it the Matilda effect: women’s work under-credited, or credited to the men beside them.
Credit tends to build on itself, because the person named on this year’s project is usually the one asked to lead the next one. A name left off a slide today can turn into a missed promotion five years from now.
Short reads for anyone new to the problem, each with a way to act at the end.
Photo: Royal Society Te Apārangi, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe problem
When her idea is ignored until a colleague repeats it, why it happens and what fixes it.
Read it
Photo: Martin Brown, NASA Glenn Research Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsHistory and research
How small missing credits grow into career gaps over years.
Read it
Photo: Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, No restrictions, via Wikimedia CommonsPhilosophy
The campaigns and thinkers who came before us, each of them named.
Read itPick the one that fits you. Each takes less than an hour to begin.
Photo: NASA, via NASA Image and Video LibraryName three women whose work shaped yours, say exactly what you borrowed from each, then tell them.
Name your three
Photo: National Assembly for Wales from Wales, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsA 60-minute workshop that checks your team’s own recent work and sets up the habits before you leave.
See how it runs
Photo: NASA/Carla Cioffi, via NASA Image and Video LibraryAdd “Whose work did this build on?” to performance reviews, which is where credit gets weighed for promotion.
Start with one questionto say her name first when you build on her point.
for a Write-In Session with your team or class.
until the follow-up that checks the habits stuck.
in the First Ten, each fixing one real record.
The Credit Map
Log something real you did to credit a woman, such as saying her name in a meeting, fixing a record or telling her. She confirms it, and her pin turns solid.
Open the Credit MapWritten In
Essays, discursives, first-person accounts and research about women’s work and the names it was recorded under, published in seasonal issues. Anyone can pitch.
About Written InWe post about women scientists, engineers, organisers and speakers and the work they did. Follow the campaign to hear their stories.
Photo: NASA, via NASA Image and Video Library
Photo: NASA/Carla Cioffi, via NASA Image and Video Library
Photo: Esthee2010, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: NASA/Cory Huston, via NASA Image and Video Library
Photo: Women Deliver, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Write-In Day
Once a year, just before performance reviews, teams publish how often women in their meetings were credited and fix one record. They also add the review-form line before reviews open.
How Write-In Day worksWe build on the work of
You can begin with one bracket in your next set of meeting notes. We’ll send you one email when the tools, sessions and Credit Map open.
Misattribution is when a woman’s idea, analysis or work gets recorded under someone else’s name, or under no name at all.
Photo: DFID - UK Department for International Development, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Magnus Fröderberg/norden.org, CC BY 2.5 DK, via Wikimedia CommonsUsually it happens out of habit. Someone talks over her point, repeats it a few minutes later and is remembered as the one who said it. Her analysis ends up in a deck that a colleague presents, or her work is written up as “the team” when a man’s work would have been written up under his name.
Any one of these can seem minor. Organisations rely on credit to work out who knows what and who to promote or invite back, though, so when the record is wrong the decisions that depend on it go wrong as well.
The most familiar version is called hepeating, a word coined in 2017 for when a woman’s idea is ignored until a man repeats it and he gets the credit.
Photo: NASA/Kim Shiflett, via NASA Image and Video LibraryStudies of authorship, patents, the news and Wikipedia all find that women’s contributions are less likely to be credited.
less likely to be named as an author on a research article, comparing women and men with the same role, experience and time on the project.Ross et al., “Women are credited less in science than men”, Nature 608, 2022
less likely to be named on a patent. The same study found that women’s work often went unnoticed or undervalued, or was ignored.Ross et al., Nature, 2022
of tenure decisions at top US universities show men got full credit for co-written papers, while women who co-wrote with men were under-credited.Heather Sarsons, reported in the Harvard Gazette, 2016
of the people heard or seen in the news are women, and progress has stalled.Global Media Monitoring Project, 2025
of English Wikipedia’s biographies are about women, a share reached only in December 2024, up from 15.5% a decade earlier.Wikimedia Australia, 2024
Hardly anyone measures the version people know best, when an idea is repeated and claimed in a meeting, so we built the Meeting Count to measure it.
Photo: NACA Langley, via NASA Image and Video LibraryIn 1993 the historian Margaret Rossiter named a pattern: women’s work is under-credited, and the credit often goes to the men they worked with.
She named it after Matilda Joslyn Gage, a 19th-century campaigner who documented women’s inventions that history had overlooked.
It works alongside the Matthew effect, the sociologist Robert Merton’s name for credit flowing to people who already have it. Taken together, they explain how small losses grow. Whoever is named early tends to get the next opportunity, which brings more credit, while the person who was left out falls a little further behind every year.
This is why WriteHerIn pays attention to small everyday moments and to performance reviews, since reviews are where credit gets turned into promotions.
This illustrates how credit compounds and isn’t based on measured data.
Somewhere, a girl had the idea first and kept it to herself.The ideas that were never spoken are the ones that no correction will be able to reach.
Photo: Adam Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsWhen women learn their ideas will be ignored or taken, some stop offering them. The philosopher Kristie Dotson calls this testimonial smothering: cutting your own contribution short because you expect it won’t be heard.
Somewhere, a girl had the idea first and kept it to herself, and nothing corrected later on will bring back an idea that was never said. What can change is what women expect will happen when they speak. The write-in is there so that before they speak, they already know their names will be recorded.
The words we use, so everyone means the same thing.
Nobody has to approve it and you don’t have to sign up to anything. Most of what WriteHerIn asks for takes a few seconds and works in any meeting, class or document.
For labs, classrooms, newsrooms and offices.
Photo: Matt Hrkac, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThese are the two to start with.
Photo: Kasyap, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsIn meeting notes, end every idea or decision with a bracket and fill in whose it was: [Priya]. The person taking notes does this, so no one has to claim their own idea. If a bracket is still empty when the meeting ends, someone follows it up.
Paste into your notes template:Idea or decision … [name]
Get the full template for Google Docs, Word, Notion, OneNote, Confluence, Slack or Teams
Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsWhen you repeat or build on a woman’s point, start with her name: “Building on Priya’s point…”. It takes three seconds, and people tend to think better of you for it. Some people call this heinforcing, the fix proposed when the word hepeating first spread.
Presenting? Add a slide that names who did the work, with women named where the work is described.
Example:
* For an action, the bracket shows whose idea it was. Who will do it goes in the action itself.
Before we close: no empty brackets. One ? to follow up.
Pick the tool your team uses.
Type her name and what she did. Use the line in your notes, your slides or a message to her.
[Priya] built the triage checklist our ward runs on.
Name three women: one from your life, one from your work and one you’ve never thanked.
For each, say exactly what you borrowed from her, for example: “she taught me to check every dose twice”. Then tell her.
Photos: 1 Gopala Krishna A, CC BY-SA 4.0; 2 Gopala Krishna A, CC BY-SA 4.0; 3 NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons[her name], I’m naming you as one of three women whose work shaped mine. What I borrowed from you: [the specific thing]. Thank you. #WriteHerIn
A five-day challenge by email, with one small thing to do each day.
Use the spoken credit once, for a woman’s point.
Write a woman’s name next to her idea in your notes.
Apply the Write-In Test to something you wrote.
Correct a slide, a document or an email thread.
Let her know what you credited her for.
A live map of real acts of credit, led by her name.
Photo: Mark Rankin, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsRecord one thing you did, such as crediting her aloud, writing her into a record or telling her. Then send her the message with its code. When she confirms, her pin turns solid. Rankings are only for places and organisations, and only count confirmed credits. Private women appear by initials unless they agree to be named.
Photo: AlphaLemur, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
For workplaces, schools, universities, hospitals and community groups that want to get credit right, both in their records and in who they promote.
Our flagship
A 60-minute workshop for a team, class or department, using its own recent work. Anyone can run it with our free script.
Small groups read a short meeting transcript. In half the copies the key idea comes from a woman, in the other half from a man. Groups decide who deserves credit, then compare. The discussion asks: what did she lose when the idea went to him?
The group runs the Write-In Test on its own recent minutes, slides, reports or assignments, and counts how many contributors were women and how many of them were named.
The group makes one correction that names a specific woman, with her consent, then adds the write-in to its meeting template, a credit slide to its slide template and the review-form line to its reviews.
The team runs a Meeting Count, confirms the correction was made, and asks the women in the team whether they are now credited more. What they say is the result we care about most.
Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe whole pack, in one download
Everything you need to run the session, free. The zip holds every file below, plus the three templates Part 3 sets up and a one-page “Start here” guide.
You don’t need to sign up. The light files are for printing and the slides are for projecting.
Each file on its own. They’re the same files as in the zip, so you only need one or the other.
![The title slide of the Write-In Session deck in its dark theme, reading [her] idea. [her] name.](/img/4f4ea2edfd.jpg)
Every slide for the hour, the 30-day follow-up and the leaders’ version, with speaker notes that match the script.
30 slides, dark for projecting · PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides
Part 1’s meeting transcripts for six settings, two copies of each, with the answer key and tally board.
15 pages · print one per group
The word-for-word script with timings, what to do if things go sideways, the pushback card, the leaders’ version, the 30-day follow-up and the safeguards.
14 pages
The Write-In Test worksheet with the count by gender, the Fix it and set it up sheet, the leaders’ worksheet, the 30-day check, answer slips and the consent and privacy note.
7 pages · print what you need
For research and health teams: trace one piece of work from the first idea to the name on it now, and grade the evidence.
4 pages
The three habits Part 3 sets up. They’re in the zip, and on their own pages:
The same session for senior teams, checking their last promotion round, award list or speaker line-up against one question: whose work did this build on? Its script, slides and worksheet are in the pack.
Anyone in the group, with the guide. Two facilitators work best, ideally including a woman, and neither the most senior person in the room. We don’t collect anything from a session: the worksheets stay with you.
One slide that names who did the work. Add it to any presentation before you present it.
Never present work without a slide naming who did it.
The three questions on the slide work on any document, slide deck, press release, award citation or school project. It passes only if all three answers are yes. Try it on your next presentation.
Photo: US Embassy from New Zealand, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Web Summit, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsAdd one line to your performance-review and promotion forms: “Whose work did this build on?”
Review forms are where credit gets turned into promotions, and adding the line costs nothing. If you count the answers by gender, you can see whether women’s contributions are being named. We ask every partner to make this change first.
Performance review
Key achievements this year
Goals for next year
Whose work did this build on?New
The guide shows HR teams where the line goes, the wording for self-reviews, manager reviews and promotion cases, and how to count the answers by gender without exposing anyone. We never see your review data.
The three parts stay the same in every setting. Who runs it, the example used, what gets checked and what gets set up all change to suit the setting.
Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Debbie Mccallum, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Russell Watkins, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: European Parliament, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Esthee2010, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Web Summit, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsTen founding leaders from schools, universities, organisations and public life.
Each commits to one public correction in their own institution within twelve months, naming a specific woman, plus the write-in and a credit slide. Their results are published together on Write-In Day as the Correction Report.
Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsAn open draft of good credit practice, version 0.1, open for pilots with two or three organisations. We’ll only certify anyone once we can check claims properly.
We measure how often women are credited and tell the stories behind those numbers. We also keep the campaign running through the year.
Photo: AlphaLemur, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsNobody measures credit at the moment, so we built these two tools to do it.
Photo: NASA/Cory Huston, via NASA Image and Video LibraryOne person tallies three ordinary meetings: ideas raised by women, how many were repeated by someone else and how many were credited to her. Only numbers are recorded, never names. Teams repeat it monthly, and Chapters combine results into a yearly picture of the problem.
Each year we count the people named in public institutions’ own announcements, such as press releases, research news and award citations, and compare women’s share with women’s share of the workforce. Every institution can check and explain its figure before we publish.
Tap through a real meeting from memory.
Ideas raised by women
6
Repeated by someone else
3
Credited to her
2
2 of 6 ideas were credited to the woman who raised them.
To count your team’s meetings for real, with monthly results and a printable tally sheet, open the Meeting Count.
Photo: NASA/Leif Heimbold, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsWe film two interview series for social media, and only one of them goes into the archive.
Short street interviews
30 to 60 seconds, twice a week on Instagram and TikTok. Ten rotating series ask people questions they think they can answer, from who body parts are named after to when they last credited a woman. These clips stay on social.
Longer interviews
Our longer-format series. Women talk with us about work of theirs that was credited to someone else, or to no one, and what it cost them.
Every On the Record interview is summarised and written up in the On the Record Archive: what happened, what she lost and what would have made it right. The archive holds On the Record interviews only.
Everyone takes part by choice and can stay anonymous or ask for removal. She approves her written summary before it’s published. We never identify the other person, directly or indirectly.
Open the On the Record Archive
Longer writing from anyone, on any part of this, goes to Written In, our journal.
When an organisation announces a product, paper, policy or award, we ask it to name the women who did the work, and we feature those women if they agree.
An announcement is often the first public record of a piece of work, and many of them credit “the team” or only quote a spokesperson. The people named in it are the ones who get cited, invited back and remembered, so a woman left out at this stage starts behind and the gap grows from there.
A launch, paper, policy or award that names no one, or only a spokesperson. Anyone can send us one.
A short, private request: which women worked on this, and what did each of them do? We ask them to add the names to the announcement, and to forward a note from us to each woman.
We only contact a woman through the organisation, and we only feature her if she agrees herself. She chooses how she’s named and approves every word, and she can ask us to take it down at any time.
A short post with her name, her role and the specific thing she did. It is about her work. It never names anyone as having taken credit, and we don’t publicise organisations that don’t reply.
Photo: World Travel & Tourism Council, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsDownload any of them as an A3 PDF. Please put them up only where you have permission to.
![Poster: her research. his headline. The word his is struck through in pink, and her is written in below it. write[her]in, writeherin.org, @writeherin.](/img/99b7f7e194.webp)
![Poster: her diagnosis. his paper. The word his is struck through in pink, and her is written in below it. write[her]in, writeherin.org, @writeherin.](/img/cf1640664c.webp)
![Poster: her notes. his presentation. The word his is struck through in pink, and her is written in below it. write[her]in, writeherin.org, @writeherin.](/img/da9c0f96de.webp)
![Poster: her code. his startup. The word his is struck through in pink, and her is written in below it. write[her]in, writeherin.org, @writeherin.](/img/ce75fdd920.webp)
![Poster: her strategy. his promotion. The word his is struck through in pink, and her is written in below it. write[her]in, writeherin.org, @writeherin.](/img/00552ae4a0.webp)
![Poster: her recipe. his restaurant. The word his is struck through in pink, and her is written in below it. write[her]in, writeherin.org, @writeherin.](/img/8e3f664395.webp)
Our journal
Writing about women’s work that went uncredited.
Written In publishes essays, discursives, first-person accounts and research about women’s work and the names it was recorded under. Each piece credits a woman’s contribution that was missing from the record, and together they give a sense of how much is still missing.
Photo: Weekend3000, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsIt’s held in the weeks before performance reviews, when credit is about to be weighed for promotions. For many Australian organisations, that’s the end of the financial year.
Start a WriteHerIn group at your school, university or workplace. A Chapter runs one Write-In Session and one Meeting Count each term, keeps the write-in going in its own meetings, adds to the Credit Map, and hosts Write-In Day locally.
School Chapters follow our child-safety policy, with an adult facilitator.
Four positions we’re prepared to argue for.
Naming the source of an idea is a question of accuracy, and an inaccurate record misleads everyone who relies on it.
It takes him about three seconds to give it back, whereas she can only claim it by spending credibility that she was already denied.
Every story, correction and count names a specific woman, with her consent. Men are never made the heroes of it.
If men report progress and women see no change, the work has failed.
A community uses credit to decide who knows what.So when credit goes to the wrong person, the next question tends to be put to them as well.
These five ideas help explain why women lose credit and how they get it back, and each one is matched to something we do in the programme. Open one to read it.
Credit is epistemic: it tells a community who knows what, and whom to consult. It is also distributive: it allocates status, authorship, promotion and pay. When a woman’s work is misattributed she misses out on the opportunities that credit brings, and everyone else is left with a mistaken idea of who knows what.
Our responseWe treat credit as a matter of keeping accurate records.
Fricker defines testimonial injustice as a speaker receiving less credibility than she deserves because of prejudice about who she is. Hepeating adds a second step, where her idea is discounted when she says it and accepted when he does, and then credited to him.
Our responseThe spoken credit gives the idea back to her in the same meeting where it was taken.
Hermeneutical injustice is the harm of lacking shared words for an experience. In 2017, “hepeating” gave women a word for this harm.
Our responseOur glossary adds words for fixing it, such as the write-in, the spoken credit, the lost link and the empty bracket.
Dotson describes a speaker cutting short her own testimony because she expects it will not be taken up. The result is ideas that never get said, and that no correction made afterwards will be able to reach.
Our responseThe write-in is built into meeting templates, so women can expect their names to be recorded before they speak.
The Matthew effect describes credit flowing to those who already have it. The Matilda effect describes women’s work being under-credited or credited to male colleagues. Together they mean a small misattribution early in a woman’s career grows into a large gap later.
Our responseWe focus on small everyday acts and on the review-form line, because review forms are where credit gets turned into promotions.
After Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition”, 2000
The philosopher Nancy Fraser separates two kinds of injustice. Recognition is being denied standing as a full participant. Redistribution is being denied resources. Credit sits where the two overlap, because a woman who isn’t recognised as a contributor then misses out on promotion and pay as well.
WriteHerIn is a recognition campaign with material consequences. It asks something different of different people:
| Approach | Who acts | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Representation | Organisers and selectors | Who is present |
| Individual empowerment | Women themselves | How women behave |
| WriteHerIn | Whoever holds the credit | Whose name is on the record |
Photo: Weekend3000, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsWomen’s contributions are recorded under other names, or none, in meetings, documents and the files used for promotion and authorship. Because credit compounds, these small losses become career gaps. Select a stage to see how we expect it to change.
What changes for women
The habits and tools reach the people who use and repeat women’s work.
How it happens
Chapters, the First Ten and partner organisations.
How we know
Teams and people reached.
The theory holds only if these four things are true. If one fails, we change that stage of the programme instead of adding new outputs.
Sarsons’ tenure research suggests it does.
How we test itPilot organisations compare named contributions in review files before and after.
Running a session once is easy, but getting a habit to stick is much harder.
How we test itThe 30-day follow-up and repeated Meeting Counts.
People keep doing things that make them look good.
How we test itInterviews with the people doing the crediting at pilots.
Adoption spreads through networks.
How we test itUptake through Chapters and the First Ten.
Every project has to pass four tests before it goes ahead.
Every story names a specific woman, with her consent.
It concerns a woman’s contribution.
It concerns present-day or living work. History appears only when an institution today corrects its own record.
The person acting is the one who used, repeated or benefited from her work.
It leaves a visible, checkable change.
We’re willing to be provocative about behaviour and what it costs women, but we never generalise about men’s nature. Every provocative line is paired with one that restores her as the subject: “Her research. Her headline.”
Historical and commemorative credit is well served by She Is Not a Footnote, Put Her Name On It and Women in Red. We link to them and keep our focus on work happening now.
Asking men to act creates a risk that the work drifts away from women. Each kind of drift has a rule that stops it.
Women drop out of it
The work turns into “credit everyone more”, and women disappear from it.
RuleEvery correction, session and public story names a specific woman, with her consent. Every count is broken down by gender.
Men become the heroes
Men end up as the main characters, as in “Tom credited Priya.”
RuleShe is the subject of every sentence: “Priya’s checklist, written in by Tom.” No praise, awards or rankings for individual men.
Objections take over
Men’s objections take up most of the time.
RuleObjections are capped at five minutes. Discussion asks “What did she lose?” rather than “How did you feel?”
Success is measured from her side. The material comes from women: scenarios, transcripts and posters are written from interviews with women, and a women-led advisory board signs off on what we publish.
Photo: USDAgov, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsThe person who used or repeated her idea holds surplus credibility. It costs him three seconds to give the credit back, while she can only claim it by spending credibility she was already denied. That makes it cheaper and more effective to ask him to act.
The same reasoning answers a common objection: that men should leave this to women. Treating any man who speaks on gender equality as suspect keeps inequality framed as women’s work to fix. And if a message about women’s credit is heard more easily from a man, that is itself an example of the problem this campaign exists to fix.
In practice we answer it with a women-led advisory board that signs off on what we publish, and named credit for every woman whose thinking we build on.
Since this is a campaign about credit, we credit our own sources here.
Documents women’s inventions that history overlooked.
Names the Matthew effect: credit flows to those who have it.
Names the Matilda effect, after Gage.
Defines testimonial injustice.
Australian leaders acting inside their own organisations.
Asks men to act. Our session format borrows from its Barbershop Toolkit.
Women in the Obama White House repeat and credit each other’s points.
A campaign for citing Black women, and a word for the harm.
Restores overlooked women in STEM to history.
Scroll sideways for the full timeline.
What an organisation does so that women’s work is recorded under their names and stays that way. It has three levels: Cite, Credit and Correct.
Credit affects who is promoted, published, invited back and paid. The Standard builds the habits that protect women’s credit into meetings, presentations, review forms and public announcements, which is where those decisions get made.
The habits are built into the organisation’s templates, so crediting women doesn’t depend on anyone remembering.
The organisation checks once a year whether women are being named and asks the women themselves, then publishes the numbers.
When a woman’s work is found uncredited, there’s a set way to put the record right, and a senior leader answers for it.
Women’s names go into the record as the work happens, at three points: meetings, presentations and reviews.
Every meeting template in use must end each idea, decision and action with a bracket, [___], for whose it was. The note-taker fills it in, so no one has to claim her own idea. A bracket left empty at the end of the meeting is followed up.
Evidence: the templates, and the minutes of three recent meetings with the brackets filled.
Every presentation template must include a slide naming who did the work being presented, for a specific contribution each. Women who contributed are named where the work is described, because a thank-you slide on its own isn’t enough.
Evidence: the presentation master, and two recent presentations.
Performance-review and promotion forms must ask: “Whose work did this build on?”
Evidence: the forms, and the date the line was added.
Every team using the templates should be shown why they exist and how to use them, for example in a Write-In Session run with our free materials.
Evidence: a list of teams briefed, with dates.
Everything in Cite, plus a yearly check of whether women are being named, and the results published.
Once a year the organisation must run the Write-In Test on a sample of its own records from the past twelve months: minutes, presentations, reports, press releases and award citations. Record how many pass, how many contributors were women and how many of those women were named.
Evidence: the list of records tested and the results.
Teams must run the Meeting Count on three ordinary meetings, at least twice a year: ideas raised by women, how many were repeated by someone else and how many were credited to her. Record numbers only, never names.
Evidence: the counts, by team and date.
Once a year the organisation must ask the women in the teams covered, anonymously, whether they are credited more than a year ago. Their answer is reported first, before the other numbers.
Evidence: the question as asked, how many answered and the results.
Each review cycle, the answers to “Whose work did this build on?” must be counted by gender, so the organisation can see whether women’s contributions are being named where promotions are decided.
Evidence: the counts for the last cycle.
Once a year the organisation must publish women’s share of named authorship and named contributions, with the audit, Meeting Count and survey results, somewhere anyone can read them, such as its annual report or website. Publish totals only, never figures about individuals.
Evidence: a link to the published figures.
Everything in Credit, plus a way to put the record right when a woman’s work is found uncredited, with a senior leader accountable.
The organisation must have a written process for correcting the record. It says who can raise a case (anyone, including the woman herself), who receives it, how long a response takes and how evidence is weighed.
Evidence: the process, and where staff can find it.
The woman whose work it was must decide whether and how she is named. Nothing is published or circulated without her agreement.
Evidence: the consent step in the process.
Each case must be graded on the evidence before anything changes. Only the top two grades can become a public correction.
Evidence: the grade recorded for each case.
A correction must put her name on the record. It must not name anyone who received the credit outside the people handling the case. Questions about an individual’s conduct go through the organisation’s usual HR process, separately.
Evidence: the wording of corrections made.
Corrections to papers, patents and awards must go through the journal’s, patent office’s or award body’s own correction process.
Evidence: the correction requests lodged.
A named senior leader must own the process and report once a year how many cases were raised, corrected, found contested and still open. Totals only.
Evidence: the leader’s name and the yearly report.
People handling cases should have referral contacts ready. A case about credit can surface harassment or discrimination, which needs its own response.
Evidence: the referral contacts given to case handlers.
Optional. Pilot organisations choose at least one to test alongside their level.
Minutes record who first proposed each idea as well as who took the action.
Press releases name the women whose work they describe, rather than only quoting them.
Every public announcement passes the Write-In Test before it goes out.
The organisation checks whether women’s unpaid advice later became strategy without credit, and credits it.
Tick each requirement you meet today. You’ll see the level you’ve reached and what’s left for the next one. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Version 0.1 will be tested with two or three organisations before anything is certified. Pilot places are open.
Choose the level you’re aiming for and at least one further commitment. Run the Write-In Test audit, the Meeting Count and the question to women, so there’s something to compare against.
Change the templates and forms, write the correction process if you’re aiming for Correct, and keep the evidence each requirement asks for. Your own staff run this with our free materials.
Repeat the baseline measures. Share the results and the evidence with us, and tell us which requirements didn’t work. Results are published, including unfavourable ones.
There’s no certificate or badge yet. We’ll only certify once we can check what organisations claim and withdraw status when it isn’t true, because a badge handed out before then wouldn’t mean much.
The text of the Standard is licensed under CC BY 4.0: you can copy and adapt it, with credit to WriteHerIn. An adapted version can’t be called the WriteHerIn Standard.
The Standard is a draft and will change after the pilots. Each version is listed here with what changed.
How WriteHerIn collects, uses, holds and discloses personal information. Last updated 4 November 2026.
WriteHerIn is a campaign based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. In this notice, “WriteHerIn”, “we” and “us” refer to the people who organise and run the campaign.
This notice explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we hold and use it, who we may disclose it to and how you can access it, correct it or make a complaint. It applies to this website, to our email address and to the campaign activities described on this site, including the Credit Map, the Credit Habit, the Meeting Count, the Named Index, our interviews and the On the Record Archive.
We handle personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. Some of the activities described below have not opened yet. We will not collect personal information through an activity until it opens, and we will update this notice before it does.
The information we collect depends on how you deal with us.
Stories shared with us may include sensitive information, for example about a person’s health or an experience of discrimination. We collect sensitive information only with the consent of the person it concerns.
We do not accept payments or donations through this website, so we do not collect payment card details.
We collect most information directly from you, through this website, by email and in person. The Credit Map is different, because it involves information about one person supplied by another. We use an entry only to display the credit. An entry is marked as confirmed only after the woman named has confirmed it, and she appears by initials unless she agrees to be named. If you are named in an entry and did not agree to it, email us and we will remove it.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not disclose it to other organisations for their own marketing.
We disclose personal information for any other purpose only with your consent.
Some of our service providers store or process information on servers outside Australia, most likely in the United States. Our email provider, Resend, sends our emails and holds the launch email list in the United States. This website also loads typefaces from Google Fonts, so your browser sends your IP address and browser details to Google when a page loads. We will list the countries involved in this notice once our providers are confirmed.
This website does not use advertising or tracking cookies and does not run analytics. It stores one item in your browser to remember your privacy choice. That item stays on your device and is not sent to us. If you sign in as an archivist, editor or counter, or to write someone in on the Credit Map, your browser also keeps a sign-in item so you stay signed in until you sign out. If you use the Meeting Count without signing in, your counts are kept in your browser on that device and are not sent to us unless you send them. If we introduce analytics, it will remain off unless you turn it on in Privacy settings, and we will update this notice first.
We send email only to people who have asked to receive it. Each email identifies us and includes an unsubscribe link. We act on unsubscribe requests within five business days, in line with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth).
We keep personal information in electronic form with the service providers described above. We take reasonable steps to protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access or disclosure, including by limiting access to the people who run the campaign and need it and by using services that encrypt data in transit. If a data breach is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify the people affected and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) as soon as practicable.
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose for which it was collected, and then we delete it or remove the details that identify you. Email addresses are kept until you unsubscribe. Unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted after 7 days, and Credit Habit sign-ups five days after the last email. Enquiries are kept until they are resolved and for a reasonable period afterwards. Credit Map entries and archive material are kept until you ask us to remove them or the project ends.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 through this website. We obtain a parent or guardian’s consent before interviewing or recording anyone under 18, and we do not show identifiable minors on the Credit Map or in the On the Record Archive.
You may ask us for access to the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to remove it or withdraw a consent you have given. Email hello@writeherin.org. We may need to confirm your identity first. We do not charge for making a request, and we will respond within 30 days. If we cannot give you access or make a correction, we will explain why in writing.
If you believe we have handled your personal information in breach of the Australian Privacy Principles, email hello@writeherin.org with the subject line “Privacy complaint”. We will acknowledge your complaint within five business days and respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the OAIC at oaic.gov.au.
Photographs on this website come from public collections and are used under their published licences. Each photograph is credited with its author, licence and source. Appearing in a photograph here does not mean the person has taken part in, or endorsed, WriteHerIn.
This website links to other websites, including Wikimedia Commons, NASA, Instagram and TikTok. We are not responsible for their privacy practices, and we encourage you to read their policies.
We may update this notice from time to time. The date at the top of the page shows when it was last changed. If a change materially affects how we handle information you have already given us, we will tell you by email where we hold your address.
For any question about this notice or about your personal information, email hello@writeherin.org.
Get in touch with WriteHerIn: organisations, schools, media and anyone with a story to share. We reply within a few days.
Photo: Petty Officer 2nd Class Josh Cassatt, U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsRemembers this choice. Always on.
We don’t run analytics today. If we add it, it stays off unless you turn it on here.
#WriteHerIn on social
Who Said That? clips go out on Instagram and TikTok. It helps most when people post their own write-ins. Here are four ways to join in from your account:
Your Name Three
Three women, what you borrowed from each. Tag them.
A write-in from your notes
A screenshot of a real bracket, with her consent.
A Who Said That? clip
Answer the question on camera: when did you last credit a woman?
The woman you credited
Send her the line. If she replies and is happy for you to share it, post that.