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Gender gap

Widespread discussions about the low participation of women in Wikipedia

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By Tilman Bayer

New York Times article sparks extended discussion of Wikipedia's "gender gap"

Concerns about the small proportion of women editing Wikipedia have been voiced for a long time, e.g. by senior Wikimedia figures including Sue Gardner and Jimmy Wales in recent interviews. However, The New York Times front-page story on January 31 (see last week's "In the news") brought an enormous amount of additional attention to the topic. This attention included further international media coverage (some summarized by Gardner on her personal blog), and a renewed discussion among Wikipedians. Much of the latter discussion took place on the newly opened "Gendergap" mailing list, which is hoped to "become a space where Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians can share research and information and tactics for making Wikipedia more attractive to women editors" (Gardner). The Gendergap mailing list discussion reached almost 200 postings within less than a week. The issue was also highlighted in a posting on the Foundation's official blog.

On the Gendergap list, Sue Gardner recommended a discussion on Metafilter on the topic ("Wikipedia, Snips & Snails, Sugar & Spice?"). Jessamyn West, who works as a full-time community manager at Metafilter and had written one of the eight commentaries invited by the NYT after its initial article, described on the list why the Metafilter community had a more balanced gender ratio – around 60/40 male/female:

Sue Gardner concluded that "the lesson for Wikimedia [from the Metafilter example], is that if the community makes something a priority, and continually reinforces it, then culture change can be achieved. I find this heartening because I think the people at Metafilter are fairly similar to the people at Wikimedia".

Gardner outlined a "kind of 'theory of the problem'", starting by saying the reason why the gender gap should be considered a problem for Wikipedia at all: "We want women to contribute to Wikipedia because we want Wikipedia to contain the sum of all human knowledge, not just the stuff that men know." She then went on to list the reasons for the gap, one being that "for many reasons that there's no point articulating because they're outside our control, women tend to be less tech-centric than men, and they tend to see technology as less "fun", something to be addressed by usability efforts. Secondly, that "women tend to have less free time than men, and they tend to spend their free time less in solitary pursuits". Adding to this, she observed a "social/cultural barricade [that] is essentially: women (tend to) dislike fighty cultures more than men".

Annie Lin and Sage Ross from the Foundation's Public Policy Initiative pointed out "that the Wikipedia Campus Ambassador program is currently about 55% male and 45% female – a gender ratio that we are quite proud of"[1] and that "a lot of our Campus Ambassadors are people who totally new to the community"[2]. (Gardner, too, had remarked in earlier interviews that women seemed more ready to volunteer for such activities when classes were asked on campus.)

Another issue, criticized as "hardcoded discrimination", is that in languages where there are different female and male forms of the word "user", such as German ("Benutzerin" vs. "Benutzer"), a user page on the corresponding Wikipedia will appear to denote a female Wikipedian as male (such as in de:Benutzer:Example), and standard messages inviting people to create a user account might appear to address newbies as male too. Sue Gardner called this "awful" and "a key piece of information that is important and new (at least to me)."

Empirical basis: The UNU-MERIT study

The estimate that only 12.64% of Wikipedians are female, which formed the bases of much of the debate – having been quoted in some form in nearly all the recent media coverage, as well as in various WMF interviews in past months – comes from the 2010 UNU-MERIT study. In a posting on "Floatingsheep" (a group blog by researchers from the University of Kentucky and the University of Oxford) the authors wondered "if this figure accurately reflects the Wikipedia community", asking about possible sample bias ("for example, Russia and Russian speakers are the largest language and country groups represented in the survey even though the Russian section of Wikipedia is only the 8th largest linguistic group"), and further possible selection bias: "There were three times as many male respondents as female respondents. Does this accurately reflect the makeup of the Wikipedia audience? Given the unexpected results for language and country, it is not clear if there might be gender bias as well". Indeed, a different estimate of the Wikipedia audience by Quantcast (quoted by Jezebel writer Anna North in her contribution to the NYT debate, "The antisocial factor") gives vastly different numbers for Wikipedia's readers: 52 percent men, 48 percent women.

In addition, the Floatingsheep post noted a lack of information about the methodology on wikipediasurvey.org (which may be somewhat mitigated by the slides from a Wikimania 2009 talk about the then ongoing study). Wikipedia researcher Joseph Reagle (who is currently working on the topic of free culture and sexism) also noted that it was "as most surveys" subject to selection bias, but quoted an earlier, smaller survey which had given an even lower percentage: 7.3%.

Assuming its validity, the report of the UNU-MERIT study includes several further insights into the gender gap besides the much-quoted number, including:

The report noted that the gender gap does not only show in edits, but extends to financial contributions: "Men are obviously more willing to donate money to Wikipedia than women, as they show considerably higher shares of donors in all age cohorts".

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"women (tend to) dislike fighty cultures more than men", that is basically the main issue from my perspective. Yes, women on average have a little less time are less tech involved etc, prefer a better user interface but the main issue is the fighty culture. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 02:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How to attract female users at universities and high-schools, and women who are not in the workforce? This might be one of the Foundation's next projects. One way to go is to form WikiProjects specifically aimed at topic areas that will be attractive to women; but that would not be enough. Ambassadors at education institutions can probably do a lot to bring in women. I do agree that the turbulent culture could be a turn-off to women. Perhaps a robust system of mentoring could be developed. It is definitely an important issue, to me. Tony (talk) 06:22, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Foundation's Data Analyst Erik Zachte has also commented about the validity of the UNU-MERIT study, according to a blog post about the gender gap by User:WWB (published around the time of the publication of this article):

What [Zachte] pointed out is that the survey had a significant problem with self-selection bias; more than a quarter of survey respondents came from Russia, for example. Among survey respondents, it is true somewhat less than 13% were female contributors. Slice it another way, and among contributors to the website, slightly more than 16% are female. Meanwhile that 25% of survey takers were female. The numbers concerning women are considerably less likely to be accurate compared to men, but it still seems probable the percentage of female contributors is somewhere south of the 25% Gardner would like it to be.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is based on referring other scientific work not adding original research thus the gender ration of Wikipedians is less of an issue then the gender of those publishing/doing research. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think you have a good point there, but nonetheless:
  1. The quality & completeness of wikipedia varies widely between subjects, fields, & wikiprojects; attracting more diverse editors can be expected to improve areas that have hitherto been neglected. May I suggest an example from a different aspect of WP:CSB? There are plenty of sources about both African and American geography, but we have many more wikipedians who live in the latter. Go pick an article about a random city in California, and compare it to an article about a random city in Congo, and see what editors have created from the available sources...
  2. Although wikipedia is and should be primarily based on external sources, human editors still have a role to play in choosing what article to write, in finding sources for each article, and in interpreting the sources (whether it's simply paraphrasing a sentence from a book, or collating a random pile of those paraphrased sentences into a structured article). If different groups of people go about this work in subtly different ways, I would welcome it. bobrayner (talk) 12:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Any error in that figure is probably irrelevant to the overall point being made. I don't think anyone disputes that the small group of readers who take an active interest in improving wikipedia - is overwhelmingly at present made up of white, male, educated, young adults. Ajbpearce (talk) 20:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm working on this issue in a number of other forums, I do want to make the point that has been brought up elsewhere that the problem is not just female differences in interest, etc., but the problem of active hostility towards woman who make newbie errors or who, if more experienced, stick too strongly to their opinions and/or Wikipedia policies, despite one or more males disagreeing with them - and even telling them to shut up and go away. (Don't get me started.) The hostility is often far greater than that towards men they have same problems with.
I've lost track of which women opining on all this in major media said what at this point, since so much written, and I'm still filtering through it. But there are some good examples at NY Times Debate: Where are the women of wikipedia? which mention actual sexism as an issue. And then there is the tremendously amusing Independent article "Wikipedia: This is a man's world. Plus lots of other stuff I'll list someplace soon when catch up at it all. But just wanted to throw those two cents in since others were opining. CarolMooreDC (talk) 21:50, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would question how exactly the figures for male and female editorship on Wikipedia were arrived at. It seems to be talking about registered users only, not all editors of Wikipedia, as it isn't easy to know if IP (unregistered) editors are male or female as they don't tend to use info boxes and give personal info. Some registered editors identify on their user page as either male or female, but an awful lot don't specify. I am a registered editor on Wikipedia and I have a 'neutral' name and haven't told anyone I am female. I mainly edit in a traditionally 'male' area of interest (military history) and I think I would be treated very differently if I announced I was female, so I don't. So I wouldn't be surprised if the number of female editors is actually higher. Mind you, we also have to factor in the pervy male editors who claim to be young nubile nudism loving editors of Swedish origin ... (I forget her name, Kristen something, but it was hilarious to about read 'her' goings-on). And unsurprisingly, I am signing off with my IP .... 86.143.69.142 (talk) 13:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I reject your claim that editors bite the female newbies more than males. In one post, you've done two things that I think are harming Wikipedia: 1) You have promoted as given that Wikipedians are sexist, and 2) you have further spread the "hostile environment" rumor. When it comes to sexism, there's probably some bad apples out there but don't let a few characterize the majority. It is possible that your opinion has given too much weight to a few incidents or that you are viewing events through colored lenses. Regarding new editor reception, I think that Wikipedia is welcoming to newcomers and the rumor is just unfair. The perception of "hostility" occurs due to factors that are complicated but boil down to it being harder and harder for the average person to improve articles as the encyclopedia matures. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
{insert} Not sure who made the claim, but the issue is not only more (it might be just a tiny bit more) but how hard and for what errors. Biting twice as hard for a minor error is much more discouraging than a little nip for a major aggressive act, be it vs. newbie or anyone else. CarolMooreDC (talk) 21:49, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I recommend everybody following this gender topic read the article "Wikipedia Is Male-Dominated. That Doesn't Mean It's Sexist." by Heather Mac Donald at Slate.com (Feb 9, 2011). The gender issue boils down to a lack of participation interest from women compared men. It is completely and utterly false that there is a sexist, anti-female environment at Wikipedia. Our editorship is among the most friendly and welcoming of online communities. The only reasonable way that Wikimedia Foundation should have tried to increase female participation was with directed advertising asking them to participate. This should have been a meeting-level issue that was transparently handled. Instead, reckless treatment of the "gender gap" statistic turned into a vicious media rumour that branded Wikipedians as sexist. It is doing considerable harm to Wikipedia's reputation and ironically may be discouraging women from contributing. I am quite mad about the whole issue and I think the Wikimedia Foundation should ask for some resignations. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We should have been surveyed long before 2008; but Foundation never made it a high priority (see meta:GUS efforts for some historical stuff). And we should have surveyed regularly from 2009 on, but again, requests that we do so fell on deaf ears (I've made them on wiki-reasearch-l, on Jimbo's page, on conferences). What we have is some date of dubious reality, and seeing how things are done here, I am afraid this is going to be the case for a while longer. Sigh. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is really not clear to me that it is wise for Wikipedia to even do demographic studies. What purpose do these statistics serve? Let the editors be who the editors are going to be! We really shouldn't care because our editorship is determined by external forces: culture, economies, governments, and other such things. It is very naive to think we can influence them in a cost-effective way. Sure, money and advertising can affect change but it is kind of like swimming upstream when you are going against culture. The donated money that runs the Wikimedia Foundation is probably better spent on things that have value directly in proportion to their cost such as hardware, bandwidth, and coding. Let the knowledge presented in the encyclopedia itself slowly change society in ways that eliminates bias in gender, age, and race. Poor public dissemination of this editor democratic information has now shown itself to have the ability to cause damage to the project's reputation. In my view, demographic surveys mostly serve to conjure up bureaucratic work that requires salary and expense but that will not translate into a better encyclopedia per dollar spent compared to other expenditures. I'm not completely convinced of this view myself but I do believe doing no such studies is not an unreasonable notion. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Jason Quinn wrote:

our editorship is determined by external forces: culture, economies, governments, and other such things

Citation needed. How do you know that internal forces have negligible effects? Even if you believe this to be the case, how would you know this without doing studies? Surely the gender gap is at least worthy of investigation. And even if you believe that it is difficult to directly influence volunteer demographics, we can probably learn things about the general decline in editorship by studying the groups which have the most difficulty (or are the most averse) to contributing to Wikipedia. NeilK (talk) 15:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How about the first e-mail from Sue Garnder on the Gender Gap mailing list itself? Quote: "I think our gender gap has its origins mainly in the external environment". I don't think my comment about external forces really needs a citation as it is kind of self-evident, almost to the point of being a tautology. Saying that those who use an online resource are those who have access to computers, seems pretty logical to me.
Back to the issue, in over 5 years on Wikipedia I've never witnessed gender discrimination. Ever. The "gender issue" at Wikipedia is pretty much just masturbatory bureaucratic-level thinking, the kind that looks for solutions to problems that don't exist. In this case, some people have latched onto an hypothesis that a hostile male-dominated culture is preventing female participation. Those who promote this unproven assumption seem to have completely ignored other possibilities such as women simply not wanting to participate as much. That notion seems to irritate some feminist-minded editors who never realized that the equal-opportunity for which they are fighting does not always demand there be equal numbers.
It's funny that you bring up the "general decline in editorship". I followed that debate quite closely. I was one of the few level-headed Wikipedians who were suggesting that the decline in editorship might not indicate a failure with the community at Wikipedia but a success with the quality of the encyclopedia itself. I marveled at the time how many different convoluted possibilities were put forth to explain the decline with almost nobody seeming to suggest the most obvious explanation.
I also participated in strategy debates regarding the results of some demographic survey a year or two ago. I was very dismayed by the insight that many editors (and staff) exhibited in those discussions. For instance, the survey discovered that parents are under-represented among active editors. Not only were people seemingly surprised by this, they were wondering how and why it is. Ever idealists and never pragmatists, in much discussion nobody seemed to suggest that, hey!, parents don't have as much free time to edit!
You'll have to forgive me. The Wiki community has not demonstrated to me that they know how to handle or interpret the results of these surveys. That is best left to skilled statisticians. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the results of half-baked surveys get spun into distorted misguided politically-correct thinking by overly progressive types. Nowhere in any of this do I see major progress being made. It's a severe waste of energy. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the fabric (underlying operating procedures and rules) of WP lend to a particular type of expression, a "meta-view" so to speak of issues addressed in articles, that is appreciated as surprisingly reasonable but flexible in men's minds, and surprisingly and frustratingly subjective as perceived by women. For example, the 3 primary rules are obviously in close but imperfect harmony and yet they are also in opposition somewhat, and HOW to reconcile them is often subjective. When you have Dragon Editors, by history mainly men, marching all over and applying their billy club edits to keep things they way they INTERPRET the rules even on subjects they know squat about (and can't even spell properly) you disincentivize women contributors. Perhaps, then, as a result WP ends up as a 1910 cigar smoker's club. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FeatherPluma (talk • contribs) 02:11, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Jason, I agree it may do a disservice to perpetuate the idea that internal factors are leading women away from the encyclopedia with only rough anecdotal evidence and when the root causes may be external, but the pragmatic issue remains: having more women would make the encyclopedia better. There are the generally accepted reasons--tendencies towards different areas of expertise and interests; the optimistic reasons--maybe women would bring a friendlier and more collaborative tone to debates; the technical reasons--maybe (really just maybe) women are on average less inclined to stumble through learning markup, and trying to attract them will hasten usability improvements... But the overarching reason to attract more women is simple: more women is more people, and no matter where they're from, we need more good editors. So a campaign that attracts a specific underrepresented group--whatever the reason for under-representation--is a good idea. If that's poor urban minorities, or women with humanities backgrounds, or African grandmothers, or low-tech Serbian middle-class dads, they all contribute--or at least they could--and anything we can do to attract them (short of fixing problems we're not sure even exist, and which rankle sociopolitical nerves) is a good idea . Ocaasi (talk) 21:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Four comments:

  • 1) the statistics may be skewed by the fact that so many of us leave the gender box at our profiles as "unspecified". It's no secret that I am female, but it doesn't appear in my Wikipedia profile or my editing work. Maybe instead of tallying "male vs. female" they should tally "male vs. female vs. unspecified."
  • 2) Let's face it, women may just have less time to SAWC (an acronym in my family that means Screwing Around With the Computer) than men. What's the old saying? "Man works from dawn till setting sun, but woman's work is never done." That saying isn't as obsolete as you might hope.
  • 3) IMO there is no "sexism" or "discrimination" or similar nasty stuff here. People respond to you based on what you said and whether it makes sense. Gender is ignored. A lot of posters tend to assume that all posters here are male - I can't tell you how many say "he" instead of "he/she" when talking about another poster. Sometimes they get indignantly corrected. But to me that just indicates that we are being responded to based on the quality of our contributions, not on our (presumed) gender.
  • 4) From the use of British spellings ("labour" etc.) in the comments above, maybe you all are talking about Wikipedia editors in the UK. My opinions come from an American perspective. Your mileage may vary. --MelanieN (talk) 05:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
First, http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results is a good indication why a lot of people leave. It suggest many women tend to leave because they don't like to see their contributions removed (usually in a fashion that doesn't explain to them as newbies sufficiently why) and don't want to get in a conflictual situation about it - probably because in the past in other forums they've experienced sexist hostility when they stood to males and such a possibility of fighting convinces them this is not a fun place to play. Some may think there no sexism here because there are so few identifiable females and few of them tend to argue their points for very long. However, in my experience should a female continue to argue her points against one or more males and run to noticeboards and get community support for her points against a couple males happily violating policies, and should she generally not be sufficiently submissive, she usually gets hammered in some way. Just because some of you haven't seen enough females stand up to enough guys for long enough on Wikipedia for sexist behavior to evidence itself, does not mean it doesn't happen and wouldn't happen more frequently if more women joined without there being some real efforts to increase civility on Wikipedia. CarolMooreDC (talk) 04:32, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]


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