Hi Marielle,
The supplementary report you pointed me to (thanks again) actually has data comparing the proportions of female readers and female contributors in the various age cohorts: it's Figure 5 on page 21.
Looking at that graphic, the proportion of female contributors vs. female readers takes a dip in the 18-21 age group, but then rises for the 22-29 age group, and rises again for the 30-85 age group. This pattern, too, does not suggest a major influence of family obligations on female contributorship: the proportion of women contributors vs. women readers rises at the precise points in time where you would think mothers of families would have their hands fullest.
In fact, the pattern is not particularly dissimilar to the pattern observed for males, shown in the same graphic on the right.
Figures 1 and 2 on page 6, which represent figures for readers and contributors combined, are more likely to reflect such an effect (I agree that it will be there to at least some extent), because women's involvement overall, as readers or contributors, is highest for children and then drops up to age 30 – though at that point it then rises again.
But the main point I wanted to make was that the old adage "women are simply too busy to spend time online and edit Wikipedia" just doesn't hit the mark. Women do have time to spend online – they're just spending it elsewhere.
Facebook use among women for example balloons between 18 and 34 years of age, the precise time when female contributorship in Wikipedia drops:
It's similar for Pinterest, where around 80% of users female:
Pinterest and Reddit are symmetrically opposite poles in the graph shown here:
Note that Wikipedia, if it were included in that graphic, would be an even more extreme outlier than Reddit, whichever of the various survey percentages available to us we were to use.
Now, just visualise what Reddit looks like and what Pinterest looks like. There's lots to think about here.
Best,
Andreas
