On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:31 AM, Johannes Rohr <johannes.rohr@wikimedia.de> wrote:

Dear all,

I have seen a number of quantitative studies, which unambiguously
confirm the existence of the gender gap as such, but I have seen very
little on what causes it to be so persistent in the Wikiverse. There
is a number of commonly proposed explanations such as the discussion
culture and the poor usability. However I have at least not come
across any studies which have tested their veracity. If anything of
that kind exists, I would be extremely happy for a pointer. I would
also be extremely curious whether any attempts have been undertaken to
weight the importance of each individual cause. Is there any
particular factors which can be clearly identified as the one or two
main showstoppers, which should thus be treated as the top priorities
or is there a whole array of causes which have more or less equal
weight?

While the data is insufficient to reach the conclusion that Wikipedia attracts females who code their language usage as male in all circumstances on-wiki and off-wiki, we have shown that females use a more male style of writing when writing for Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a smaller percentage of female contributors than other wikis: The problems are not solely caused by Wikipedia's content being an informational style of writing that is more typical of males, as shown by the fact that other wikis manage to attract larger proportions of female contributors when also using a similar informational style of writing.

There are some differences in responses between men and women, which appears to support the general conclusion that men and women have different reasons for (not) contributing to Wikipedia and that gender specific type engagement may be needed. One of the arguments that I’ve heard is that women would like to contribute to Wikipedia but they just do not have the time because they need to take care of their families. This small sample appears to suggest this isn’t the case: Women, much more than men in this sample, just have better things to do. I’ve talked to a few women in this sample about this to try to understand what better things they have to do, because I’ve heard the argument that women do use this type of technology and some people don’t understand why, if women do blogging and other online content creation, why they don’t contribute to Wikipedia. In this particular sample, the women I talked to explained it to me as they have a set of things they prioritise in what they do. In the case of one non-contributor, they do contribute to another wiki that immediately ties into her interests. Beyond that, she has learned that her contributions have value and that value can be realised by getting paid for them by writing for sites like associated content and squidoo. There isn’t the inherent value that can be realised when contributing to Wikipedia, so why should she spend the time contributing? This appears to be supported because of the six who said they have better things to do, only one female also said she didn’t have enough time to contribute.

From an Australian perspective based on observation, I can this list has the potential to be a bit of a show stopper. :( We had about three women who were active in trying to get women involved with Wikipedia. Their efforts were even mentioned on Signpost. They joined the list, and it killed off informal, non-Chapter female efforts in the country to specifically do outreach to women. Oops. :(