Dear all,
Just wanted to let you know about some interesting
contributions to the Wikimedia article gender balance from
a slightly unexpected source.
On Saturday, Wikimedia UK had a World War I-themed
Editathon[1], where we essentially put a lot of
Wikimedians and a group of academics in a room and asked
them to help improve coverage of World War I.
The gender balance was markedly better amongst the
academics we'd invited (4 men, 3 women) than among the
Wikimedians (20 men, no women at all) - which prompted
quite a lot of debate about gender balance among Wikimedia
volunteers (not very good) and also about the gender
balance of Wikipedia's coverage of the topic (also, not
very good!). It might also be that we'd taken a lot of
steps to promote the event amongst the English Wikipedia's
large and active military history community (which
probably has worse than average gender balance, at a
guess).
I'm pleased to say that one of the outcomes from the
event is an article, currently in sandbox but well worthy
of a DYK nom when in due course, on the topic of "Surplus
women" - a demographic imbalance that existed (or was
perceived) in Western Europe in the industrial era,
accentuated by the mass slaughter of World War I, and
hitherto completely absent from Wikipedia. You can have a
look at it here :-)
Many thanks,
Chris
Wikimedia UK
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