Yes, the Teahouse project has some data to back it up. You can talk to Jonathan Morgan, who co-build the space and was the lead in pulling data if you need to:
jmorgan@wikimedia.org
Laura Hale has been doing some interesting research about the top contributors to English Wikipedia and who write about women's subjects. It's rather depressing, of course.
laura@fanhistory.com
The research work the Program Evaluation and Design team did about edit-a-thons and workshops shows little to no retention, which is no surprise, really. But, that was not gender specific. My own personal research showed the same, with womencentric events.
But, that doesn't mean a dent hasn't been made. Yes, the Education program happens to have a lot of women who contribute, especially successes in Arabic Wikipedia, but, outside of that specific program, the goal isn't to retain, it's to improve content.
I suggest people look at the improvement of "women centric" content versus the retention of women editors. The nut still hasn't been cracked (puns so not intended) on user retention through events, etc.
We did discover that a lot of content gets created via edit-a-thons and such events, versus the amount of people who stay on as editors.
Don't rule out press and the attention the movement has received on the subject. If you look at the partnerships - hell, the UK government basically said "uh hello, we need more women in science on Wikipedia," last week. Awareness is just one component of "making a difference."
-Sarah
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