I think the likelihood is fairly high that more active women are more likely not to identify their gender. For what it's worth, I didn't hide my gender as diligently for the first year or so that I actively edited and I think I may have asked someone to use female pronouns at one point. It's only after high profile cases of women being harassed on the internet (Kathy Sierra) and after noticing that my neutral user name seemed to garner more respect than posts I make in other parts of the net, where I use a female pseudonym, that I decided to actively suppress my gender. If I weren't a particularly active editor, it wouldn't be a big deal for me. I'm so invested in Wikipedia that gender based harassment or even the decreased perception of my capability would be disruptive to me if I chose to identify myself on-wiki. <br>
<br>Nepenthe<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Sage Ross <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sross@wikimedia.org">sross@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
We're crossing streams a bit between this list and wikitech-l.<br>
<br>
On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Lars Aronsson <<a href="mailto:lars@aronsson.se">lars@aronsson.se</a>><br>
wrote on wikitech-l:<br>
<br>
><br>
> One thing that could be interesting is to trace<br>
> the career of users: When they register, how<br>
> frequent they edit, if the frequency varies<br>
> over time, and if these patterns differ between<br>
> men and women and the gender-anonymous.<br>
><br>
<br>
User:Dispenser is working on something similar, I think for the next Signpost.<br>
<br>
Take a look at this (a work in progress and not mine, so please don't<br>
distribute):<br>
<a href="http://toolserver.org/%7Edispenser/temp/gender/total_edit_zero_2011-02-10.png" target="_blank">http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/temp/gender/total_edit_zero_2011-02-10.png</a><br>
<br>
The table at the left traces gender identification rates for editors<br>
with less than or equal to the listed number of edits (but more than<br>
the previous row). So the first row is editors with 0 edits, the<br>
second is editors with 1 edit, the third is editors with 2-3 edits,<br>
then 4-7 edits, etc. The last row is everyone with over ~65k edits<br>
(and less than 5,000,000). It's based on essentially the 250,000 most<br>
recent users who have edited or created an account.<br>
<br>
So the takeaways are:<br>
<br>
a) the more edits you make, the more likely you are to declare your gender.<br>
<br>
b) the ratio of declared females to males falls from about 20% for<br>
people who make just zero or one edit, to a stable 5-6% for people who<br>
make 1000 or more edits.<br>
<br>
Of course, as Woonpton notes, there could be factors that distort<br>
that. Maybe women who become active editors are more likely than<br>
other women to *not* declare gender. But at first glance, it would<br>
seem that the gender gap is larger among very active editors.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
-Sage<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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