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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