At the risk of seeming like I'm doing shameless self-promotion, I would like to point out that the Wikipedia Campus Ambassador program is currently about 55% male and 45% female - a gender ratio that we are quite proud of.

I think this can also have very promising implications: Campus Ambassadors go into classrooms to teach students how to edit Wikipedia and also hold workshops/talks about Wikipedia for university staff and faculty; as such they're often seen as teacher/mentor figures, and it's likely very encouraging to the female students/staff/faculty to see that this role is taken on by fellow women. I have no data to back myself up on this particular point, but I think it's a reasonable hypothesis, and I would be very interested in helping out with research projects that explore this more.

Annie Lin
Campus Team Coordinator (Public Policy Initiative)
Wikimedia Foundation
alin@wikimedia.org

On 2/4/11 2:38 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:

I don't see any reason why we can't start reaching out to the University Ambassadorship programs to perhaps invoke more female involvement. "Women Who Wiki" (and this can be extended of course to individuals who identify as women in any way)