All the studies on female participation come up with low percentages around 10% plus or minus a few percent. Of course, it is possible that in all of the studies the women are choosing not to self-identify. It is an inherent difficulty in any study if people choose to not reveal information. But we know women make up large proportions of social media users, so if women’s participation in Wikipedia is actually higher than studies show due to reluctance to self-identify, it begs the question of why they are so unwilling to self-identify in the content of Wikipedia but not in other contexts. Either way, it points to some problem. The last Wikimania recently released data that does show a higher level of female participation, about 1 in 3, I think. It would be interesting to see how the male/female numbers break down across the various types of attendees, e.g. WMF staff, Chapter members, event organisers, etc. My suspicion is that women are in higher proportion among staffers, chapters, etc and this skews the Wikimania participation. I don’t know how scholarships are awarded and whether women are at any advantage in that process.

A very interesting research paper http://files.grouplens.org/papers/wp-gender-wikisym2011.pdf shows that women are less likely to survive the newbie stage than men. But, perhaps contrary to what many expected, their data does not suggest that women are more easily discouraged by being reverted (they show men and women’s survival rates in the face of reversion are similar) but that more women’s edits are reverted than men’s edits and this is the cause of higher attrition among women. This has caused me to wonder if women as newbies are more attracted to articles where the risk of reversion is higher perhaps because there are more policies to be considered (e.g. biographies of living people, noting that women are predominantly the purchasers of “celebrity” magazines which deal mostly in content related to living people). The paper does show that men and women edit in different areas (men are more likely to edit in geography and science for example) but the analysis is too high level to answer my question. The other inherent limitation in any study of newbies that there is nothing in the initial signup to Wikipedia that asks you about your gender (even optionally) so very few newbies are self-identifying as either male or female at that time. So, it’s actually very hard to study the non-surviving female newbies because you can’t find them. This often means our study of the experiences of newbies is based heavily on those who are still around later to be studied or surveyed which introduces survivor bias into the study. So this may be a consideration in relation to the findings of this paper. Interview studies keep pointing to women not liking the abrasive environment of Wikipedia. Civility is a part of that issue. Although I think it’s not so much about the use of specific words, but rather a general culture of aggression. The people who use the swear words are simply much easier to spot and hold up as examples of the broader problem than those who engage in equally aggressive behaviour but do so citing [[WP:Policy]] and use the undo-button.

In relation to pro-active recruitment, I do a lot of that here in Australia, edit training and edit-a-thons. While some of the edit-a-thons have targeted women participants and are therefore predominantly women, edit training events are generally not so targeted and attract both women and men. From all of that I believe that women are not inherently disinterested in contributing to Wikipedia. However, these events do not seem to create ongoing editors (whether female or male) and this experience is not unique. A recent survey by the foundation found that this is the case all over the world. Generally, the one-event approach to edit training isn’t sufficient. Greater success seems to come from regular events usually in a university/college setting, but regular events are a challenge to resource with volunteers (we have other things that have to be done in our lives). Interestingly, most of the people who currently attend our sessions are middle aged and older. Many struggle with the markup; I hope the visual editor will address some of that problem. So I think we need to look at diversity in terms of age as well as gender. But I don’t think outreach is really the answer because it cannot be done at the necessary scale. It’s not that we need to have a team of mentors, we need everyone to be willing to help one another.

One thing I learn from our outreach is that many of the newbies (male and female) have unpleasant experiences even during the outreach events as well as soon afterwards. Their edits are reverted (for what seems to me to be no justifiable reason), new articles being speedily deleted or splashed with messages about policies they don’t know about and don’t comprehend, or left in an eternal limbo of rejection in Article for Creation. These folks are all “good faith” and they are all newcomers but the policies of “assume good faith” and “don’t bite the newbies” are completely ignored. We have many editors who are very aggressive. I have no idea if they are just angry with the world as a whole, or actually enjoy bullying the newbies. While obviously there are benefits to a culture of mentoring, even when I am in hand-holding edit-training mode (about as mentoring as it gets and I provide my contact details off-wiki as well as on-wiki for any follow-up), it’s difficult for me to justify to them why the newbie’s edits are being undone because the edits simply aren’t that bad. The situation makes me very angry. It is not as if it is the same small pool of editors creating these problems where maybe one could try to take action against them. It seems that we have such a huge pool of aggressive editors that our newbies will randomly attract the attention of one of them. (Or it may be that some bullying personalities are actively on the lookout for victims and newbies are a soft target).

So, all in all, I think if we need to go back to first principles “the encyclopaedia anyone can edit” and see that the aggressive nature of the community is working against this intention and seek to curb that aggression. I think curbing the aggression would result in more editors both male and female. So in that light, I would have to say that I find the ArbCom decision distressing as it appears to acknowledge and reinforce that the aggressive culture is both dominant and should continue to be so.

Kerry

From: gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Davenport
Sent: Tuesday, 2 December 2014 5:40 AM
To: Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Gendergap] Moving Forward

Is that addressed to me? Not sure. In any event, the first link doesn't seem to me either a "lack of civility" or a "gender gap issue," but rather another one of the tens of thousands of more or less unimportant conversations that happen backstage at Wikipedia by people killing time in between contributing to the encyclopedia.

That said...

(1) Political organizing should happen off wiki, not on wiki. This is just as true for WikiProject Conservatism as it is for WikiProject Gender Gap Task Force. Wikipedia is not the place. Go for it, just not there.

(2) GGTF misfired by obsessively identifying with civility patrolling as its primary function. At a minimum, that is putting the cart before the horse. Going further: I would argue that it is an an absolutely misplaced predilection, that a very low-importance contributing factor to WP editor gender disparity has been elevated into The Main Reason without statistical evidence. It's a hot-button topic at WP and it was a fight poorly chosen.

(3) Here's what needs to happen:

A. Quantify and track the actual gender gap at WP over time. Anecdotally, female participation at events like Wikimania is significantly greater than the 1F:7M ratio that would be anticipated from the estimated ratio of registered editors. Does this mean that the differential is exaggerated due to an undercount or under-self-reporting of female editors? Why are there not annual estimates made and tracked by WMF or by GGTF itself?

B. Survey to determine the actual reasons for participation or non-participation. This is something GGTF can do. Analyze the editing patterns of randomly selected female and male Wikipedians, as well as those who decline gender identification. Then get in touch with each of these three sets to identify what they feel are the strengths and fundamental problems of the Wikipedia experience. Similarly, poll the M/F/Decline To Answer pools who fall inactive for six months as to the cause of their non-participation.

C. Coordinate pro-active recruitment. Edit-a-thons, university outreach, etc. targeting new female participants. This is the main way that gender disparity will be overcome — one new editor at a time.

D. Targeted, organized mentoring. Watch the new editor pool and target female newcomers. Help them through the learning curve. Too often newcomers of both genders are left isolated; bring them into the community.

Count — Survey — Recruit — Teach.

Tim Davenport

"Carrite" on WP

Corvallis, OR

=====

>>>Not sure if this will produce a new thread or attach to the existing one (I've checked my spam folder, there's nothing there) but anyway....

>>>Tim: I just wondered whether you regard this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force#Moving_forward

>>>...as a lack of civility or a gender gap issue?

>>>In particular this comment:
"...As has been indicated on the talk page of the proposed decision, repeatedly, there is some question as to exactly which
women this group seems to be reaching out toward, specifically, whether it is more or less of a more or less radical feminist perspective...."

>>>I thought it summed up in a nutshell what the GGTF was really up against. It's a kind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
* Are you now or have you ever been a feminist who believes that sex work is the opposite of feminism?
Anyone who answers yes that question is judged to be a "radical", a subversive who wants to push POV and therefore they are fair game.

>>> On WP's list of feminists there were a very odd mish-mash of categories of feminist https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_feminists&oldid=544136790 and lots of names missing e.g. Gail Dines. I did a major rewrite to organize it chronologically and it meant that "anti-pornography feminists", "anti-prostitution feminists" and "socialist feminists" could go onto the list https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_feminists&oldid=545667727

>>> The list has recently been changed to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_feminists and I'm working with a couple of editors to see how we can improve it further.

>>> I've largely avoided trouble by sticking to admin based work such as this, and similar work:
Cleaning up bibliographies, e.g. Joseph Schumpeter, from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Schumpeter&oldid=633566034#Major_works to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Schumpeter&oldid=634343909#Major_works
Creating an article for the International Association for Feminist Economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_for_Feminist_Economics
and improving the article for the Human Development and Capability Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_and_Capability_Association
then creating biographies for past presidents of IAFFE and fellows of the HDCA.
Adding DOBs to notable scholars and then adding them to Wiki's calendar (births).

>>>These organisations / individuals argues against sex work on the grounds of the perception of women that is generated (i.e. as a thing / object). The problem with the MRA, pro-porn, pro-sex work POV is they have no problem with anti-porn etc. POV provided it is in a box labelled "mad" or "religious" with a sub-text that the only people that could possibly support that POV are from the moral right and are probably racist and homophobic as well. The other problem that the MRA have is that, human development and capability, which includes feminist economics / inequality / care work etc. collectively constitutes a 'single broad topic' (WP:SPATG), so they are unable to stop editors, who wish to edit in this area, from doing so. The natural place for this work is within the Gender Studies project. Which is why they write nonsense like this:http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/fighting-wikipedia-corruption-censorship/ (if there were really the kind of censorship that they are talking about on WP then there would be no Pornography Project).

>>> Any attempt to show 3 distinct POVs
(a) Pro-sex work
(b) Right-wing anti-sex work (on moral / judgemental grounds), and
(c) Left-wing anti-sex work (on negative perception grounds) - the POV that dare not speak its name
... is met with a steel fist hammered onto the table.

>>> I made a video for use in the article "sex wars", an article which is all about the separation between (b) and (c)https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Feminist_sex_wars&oldid=546995190
It was deleted instantly on the grounds that the "Video makes little sense and does not add to informational value of article." I dispute that it "makes little sense" and why does it even need to add informational value? Why can't it just be to add aesthetics to the article as pictures and videos often are?

>>> As soon as I step off the path of admin related tasks that the MRA-mob can't get me for, and stray into article content I am jumped on, obstensibly for technical reasons but they are almost exclusively by editors whose other edits are connected to porn and sex-positive feminism, who have pretty much hijacked the Feminism project and they are trying to do as much damage as possible to the Gender Studies project as they can as well.

>>> It may be time for an article on "fourth-wave feminism" which is separate to the "history of feminism", but the article would have to say that the term is used by both (a) and (c), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_feminism#Fourth_Wave . You're not supposed to mention (c), you're only supposed to mention (a) and (b) - and then arch your eyebrows at the moral and out-of-touch group that is (b). Anyone trying to create it would run into the MRA trying to lump (b) and (c) together. The talk page would be full of stuff like, "well the article should say that, 'group (b) have been called fourth-wave, but it is just a very, few number of places and the term is far more attributed to group (a) than any other group of feminists'.

>>> This message is longer than I originally intended it to be but I do think that there are a lot of well meaning editors on WP who are either unaware or a bit naïve when it comes the antics of the people that we are talking about. It is also naïve to think that they are not co-ordinating their handiwork off-wiki.

>>> Marie