Hey folks,
A colleague at another organization asked me if I'd write up a quick
note recapping the basics about Wikipedia's gender gap and Wikimedia's
response to it. I did it for him, and then thought it might make sense
to also share it here.
It's below.
Thanks,
Sue
In January 2011, the New York Times published a story headlined
“Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List,” about the
gender gap on Wikipedia. It was rooted in the finding, from a 2008
UNU-Merit survey developed in partnership with the Wikimedia
Foundation, that only 13% of Wikipedia editors are female.
That piece prompted a flurry of other coverage, including six essays
in the New York Times from academics and other experts, a series of
commentaries in The Atlantic Monthly, opinion pieces in Canada’s
national newspaper the Globe and Mail and in the Ottawa Citizen, and
stories in Discover, Discovery News, Mother Jones magazine, Slate
magazine, the NPR blog, the UK newspaper the Telegraph, The Village
Voice, MSNBC, the Business Insider, TG Daily and the feminist blog
Jezebel. Links at the bottom.
None of that was an accident: we wanted the coverage, and we sought it out.
The Wikimedia Foundation has been aware that Wikipedia had a gender
gap, and we believe it’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed.
Wikipedia’s vision is to contain “the sum of all human knowledge.” The
premise is that everyone is invited to bring their crumb of knowledge
to the table, and together those crumbs become a banquet. If women are
underrepresented at the table, we can’t achieve the vision. So solving
the gender gap is critical.
But it's also very difficult. At Wikipedia, you don’t fix
deeply-rooted cultural problems through top-down mandates: you do it
through discussion. You need to have awareness that there’s a problem,
develop a consensus that it matters, and instigate, facilitate and
support efforts to fix it.
This particular problem is complicated by the fact that solutions
don’t lie entirely within the Wikipedia editorial community, because
important voices are missing there. We knew we would need to bring in
voices from outside, and support them in making themselves heard. Only
then would we have a shot at achieving lasting cultural change. Hence
the New York Times article.
In January, Sue Gardner (Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director) and
Moka Pantages (Wikimedia Foundation Global Communications Manager)
used the occasion of Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary to have an
off-the-record lunch with New York Times staff. At the lunch, we
talked with them about our gender gap. We knew it would stimulate a
big, public conversation. And it did: immediately after the story was
published, we were flooded with media inquiries and offers of help.
* Female columnists and bloggers pledged to try editing Wikipedia
themselves, and urged their readers to do the same. Academic, feminist
and women-in-technology groups started discussing on their internal
lists how they can help.
* Several prominent academics with specializations in gender and
technology offered us their ideas about the origins of the problem.
* An anthropologist offered to help the Wikimedia Foundation design a
study to find out why so few women edit.
* The Wikimedia Foundation launched a new public mailing list to talk
about the issue: in its first two weeks it attracted 150+ members
who’ve made 500+ posts to the list (35 per day).
* A moderator at a popular online forum which has successfully solved
its own gender problems shared what had worked for them.
* Wikipedians conducted an analysis of editor self-identification as
female across multiple language versions of the encyclopedia,
resulting in the finding that the highest proportion of
self-identified women is at the Russian Wikipedia, which is also the
faster-growing Wikipedia.
* Wikipedians created a Facebook group “Women at Wikipedia.”
* Wikipedians have created special wiki-pages and wiki-projects aimed
at brainstorming ideas for fixing the gender gap.
* Wikipedians have proposed using International Women's Day, March 8,
to kick off a special initiative inviting women to become Wikipedia
editors. The staff of the Wikimedia Foundation is currently assessing
how it could support that initiative with banner invitations and by
helping experienced editors self-organize to mentor and support women
who respond to that invitation.
Current state: We've leveraged Wikipedia's visibility to develop
public awareness of the gender gap, resulting in a flurry of
decentralized activity in expected and unexpected forums,
brainstorming potential solutions. Those forums include a healthy mix
of women and men, and experienced Wikipedians and external
perspectives.
Some of the initiatives that have been proposed will fizzle out and
have no impact. But some will flourish. In coming months, we hope to
learn, with some cautious investment on the part of the Wikimedia
Foundation, which catalyzing strategies can successfully increase
female participation in Wikimedia projects. We have a 2015 goal to
increase the percentage of female editors to 25%. As we get smarter
about which strategies work, we will ramp up our investment. The
initial global positive energy around and interest in this topic are
giving us confidence that we can reach our goal.
Links to some of the coverage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=1&src=b…http://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-is-hampered-by-its-huge-gender-gap…http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/01/wikipedias-gender-problemhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8293217/Why-Wikipedias-edit…http://www.tgdaily.com/software-brief/53845-85-of-wikipedia-entries-are-mad…http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2011/01/31/on-friendship-bracel…http://jezebel.com/5747740/why-wikipedia-needs-more-ladieshttp://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Where-Are-All-the-Wiki…http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/01/31/133375307/facing-serious-gen…http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/31/5960810-dude-centric-wikipe…http://news.discovery.com/tech/is-there-a-gender-gap-online.html?print=truehttp://www.slate.com/id/2284501/pagenum/all/#p2http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/world+according/4246585/story.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in-wiki…http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/01/wikipedia_is_a.php
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hey folks,
Erik Moeller, my deputy, created this group at my request, and so I'm
its owner. To recap for anyone who doesn't know: this list was
prompted by a January 31 New York Times story about Wikipedia's gender
gap. The NY Times story prompted a lot of discussion among experienced
Wikipedians, new editors, and external people such as researchers and
academics. We created this list so that the discussion had somewhere
to go -- because people wanted to help, and we wanted to give their
energy and momentum a place to grow.
Thus far, I haven't made any attempts to moderate or shape the
conversation here in any way. People who are used to Wikimedia lists
probably are finding the experience here pretty familiar -- the
conversation is unstructured, wide-ranging, and there's no real
quality control. People who are more used to non-Wikimedia lists might
find it TOO uncontrolled, too noisy, too wide-ranging: I don't know.
My hope when we started the list was that it would be a place where
people could come together to share experiences and information about
the causes of Wikipedia's gender gap, and kick around possible
solutions. I hoped that, at worst, it could become a sort of talkfest
and "centre of expertise" on the gender gap issue --- and at best, it
would be a place where real work would happen (e.g., the Women Edit
Wikipedia Month type stuff). I assumed it'd be a pretty loose
conversation, with plenty of noise to the signal, and it would end up
(like many of our lists) being supplemented by work on wiki pages.
And that, I think, is pretty much how it's playing out.
So I'm curious to know from the people here:
1) Is the conversation here pretty much what you expected? Is it
better or worse than you expected -- and if so, in what ways?
2) Are you comfortable with this discusson being mostly unmoderated,
or would you prefer that we had some simple behavioural
rules-of-engagement?
3) Would anyone care to offer to help me moderate? The moderation has
been pretty light so far: a few people with questions about how to do
something, and a half-dozen posts stuck in the approval queue --- it's
very easy stuff to handle. I am often in meetings though, or
travelling, so I've felt bad when someone's question or post is
pending for hours. If you want to help, let me know off-list :-)
4) Any other comments about what we're doing here -- including, ideas
about how we can be more effective.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
hi, I'm kath. I've had a wikipedia account for a while but didn't use it
until yesterday when I saw on twitter that only ~13% women are editing it.
(I saw links to a twitter conference that I'd missed
http://wthashtag.com/women4wikipedia) so I reset my password and read a few
help pages and tried editing a few articles to fix things like
references/links. I'm a digital tv engineer and use wikipedia every day, so
I thought it's probably about time I joined in and started giving back. I
liked reading the 'be bold' article - it reminds me of my fav saying 'make
your own fun'. hoping to learn more & improve the collection of knowledge.
not sure if I should be on this list considering how new I am, but I'll see
how it goes.
cheers
kath
user:kathodonnell
Hey folks,
Somebody here sent me an off-list e-mail with data about Wikipedians
self-identifying as female in their preferences: basically, the same
information Joseph has blogged about (http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/).
I was skimming fast through my inbox and tagged it as spam, and now
it's disappeared from my spam folder.
Whoever sent it, could you resend? I want to read it, to see if it had
information additional to what Joseph posted, and I also want to thank
you for sending it to me. I tagged it as spam by accident, partly
because I didn't recognize your name. But I do appreciate you sending
me the mail :-)
Thanks,
Sue
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
I agree with Sandy.
The % of Wikipedia editors who are women
is a completely different subject than
pornography.
I am a feminist.
I am also inclined to be efficient.
A month to call for Women editors
without mentioning any specific
topic will encourage women to
contribute on any and every topic,
which is the goal.
When the efforts to increase
women's participation is combined
with women's history,
pornography, language issues,
etc. the message gets
watered down and changes.
The emphasis becomes the topics
to be edited PLUS
the gender of the editor.
So since I am not an expert
on feminist studies, I would
not be more inclined to post.
Do not try to address everything
at the same time. You will
not get the results you want.
The separate threads so far
encountered on this list:
1.) updating and increasing entries
about women's history
2.) updating and increasing entries
about feminist issues
3.) correcting existing entries that
are offensive to most persons,
not just women, and review/edit
information, pictures, or drawings
that exploit women,
regardless of the the gender of
who posted them
4.) ease of use of the Wikipedia
interface
5.) gender and Manga child sexiness
of the Wikipedia mascot
6.) gender differences in languages
which are reflected in the Wikipedia
interface for that language
7.) gathering empirical data to
further guide our understanding
of the Wikipedia gender gap,
and to monitor any improvements
in this gap as a result of the
different campaigns to
reduce the Wikipedia gender gap
so that we know what is working
and what is not.
Let's do what the experts do:
Separate these topics into
different work groups and lists
so that progress can be made
on each.
These subjects all have sexism
as their root, but they are not
all solvable at once.
Define each, go after each.
You can't defeat a big
enormous blob.
BTW - I am currently preparing
my entries for the Wikipedia.
I do not wish to be merely
a commentator, I plan on
becoming a participant.
I'll let you know how that
works out.
- Susan Spencer Conklin
> Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:33:35 +0000
> From: Sandra ordonez <sandratordonez(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Moderation?
<snip>
>
> I didn't join this list because I'm confused of why sexism in the world
> exists, nor did I join this list because I need a therapy outlet. I, like
> many women, joined this list because we want to focus on something
> practical
> - closing the gender gap on Wikipedia.
>
<snip>
>
> Sandy
>
I agree.
--- On Mon, 2/14/11, gendergap-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org <gendergap-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> From: gendergap-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org <gendergap-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Gendergap Digest, Vol 1, Issue 77
> To: gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Date: Monday, February 14, 2011, 6:57 PM
> Send Gendergap mailing list
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Moderation? (Oliver Keyes)
> 2. Wikiproject: Womens Cafe for all
> language wikis
> (carolmooredc(a)verizon.net)
> 3. Re: Wikiproject: Womens Cafe for all
> language wikis (Oliver Keyes)
> 4. Re: Moderation? (Andreas Kolbe)
> 5. Press inquiry (Steven Walling)
> 6. Re: Hardcore images essay (Andreas
> Kolbe)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:44:58 +0000
> From: Oliver Keyes <scire.facias(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Moderation?
> To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
> <gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTiko1DQ06v8yw5RWnyFfkaaD+9876qDFKn1EJCR9(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Seconded. I don't think "another for broader issues" would
> be at all useful.
> People are welcome to have wide-ranging discussions about
> the necessary
> changes to society etc etc, but the fact of the matter is
> that the WMF can't
> *make* those changes.
>
> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Casey Brown <lists(a)caseybrown.org>
> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 5:36 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > I wonder whether it would make sense to have two
> lists -- one for
> > > Wikipedia-specific suggestions, and another for
> the broader issues.
> >
> > Maybe, or just more clear expectations of what isn't
> the most helpful
> > things here. I've been seeing a lot of
> general/deep philosophical
> > questions and topics like the Bible and
> capitalism. I don't know
> > about anyone else, but I just click "mark all as read"
> for those ones.
> > :-) This list is about increasing gender
> diversity in Wikimedia
> > projects, not about describing the history of gender
> issues throughout
> > time.
> >
> > --
> > Casey Brown
> > Cbrown1023
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Gendergap mailing list
> > Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
> >
>
Dear All,
if in reaction to this international debate, and some others on same topic
locally, you had happen to realise the issue and want to change the current
situation, in Poland we're starting as very simple and easy reaction the
workshops for she-wikipedians-to-be.
this way we want to encourage and empower women to join the community of
wikipedians and not only to open accounts (we don't want to just raise
statistics for women's presence among wikipedians) but mostly to actively
contribute to Wikipedia.
i came to that simple idea and so here we are, starting here locally in
Warsaw, Poland.
more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_Also_a_Woman
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_Also_a_Woman>it's easy
to make it more global action, so if you're able to organize similar
projects also on March 8, or about, please do so and list on this website.
it would be wonderful if this could work out to empower women in this
aspect, and also that we could make it a global action. :)
Lantuszka
Hey everyone,
So a writer from the (widely read and pretty influential) tech blog ReadWriteWeb would like to whip up something that follows up on the New York Times piece. Her name in Audrey Watters, and on Jay and Moka's recommendation I'm bringing it to the list because she's interested in talking to someone who is involved in a project to recruit new female editors.
It's awesome that she's interested in what's being planned in the way of constructive change, and she's already seen efforts like the Women's History WikiProject on English Wikipedia. If you're interested in talking to her in any capacity, let me know and I'll forward you along to her. (She'd be most happy to talk to someone who is comfortable being quoted directly, but if you not just be up front about it and she'll respect your preference.)
I'd like to especially prod editors like Phoebe, SlimVirgin, and Pharos who are helping plan things now and have lots of experience with past efforts around the gender gap. :-)
Steven Walling
Fellow at the Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org
Just wanted to share. Yesterday I put something on my facebook re: gender
gap. My friend from high school, who totally would be a woman who would
enjoy editing an encyclopedia, posted the following:
"Whenever I edit it usually gets taken down but some OCD nerd, that probably
wants no one touching "their" site so I stopped bothering."
Of course, another question no one's asked is: just what is the practical effect or effects of indicating a gender preference on enwiki right now?
Daniel Case