Fwd: [PRESS] Discovery News: Is There A Gender Gap Online? - Gendergap

16 Feb 2011


      ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org
Date: 16 February 2011 10:51
Subject: [PRESS] Discovery News: Is There A Gender Gap Online?
To: Communications Committee wmfcc-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Is There a Gender Gap Online?
By Cristen Conger | Mon Feb 7, 2011 11:31 AM ET
http://news.discovery.com/tech/is-there-a-gender-gap-online.html?print=true
When the online encyclopedia Wikipedia recently celebrated its 10th
birthday, media outlets highlighted its stunning growth, number of
articles, range of topics -- and its contributor gender gap.
A 2010 study co-sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation discovered that
barely 15 percent of Wikipedia contributors are women, with the lion’s
share of the articles being written, edited and updated by men in
their mid-20s.
“(Online) public contexts such as web forums and Wikipedia, especially
if they’re associated with domains such as politics, technology, or
knowledge, are still overwhelmingly male-dominated,” said Susan C.
Herring, a professor of information science at Indiana University who
specializes in online communication. “These domains are important, and
women’s relatively lesser participation in them is potentially a cause
for concern.”
But that doesn’t mean women don’t have a presence on the Web. A few
years ago, we wondered whether there was a gender gap in terms of who
was getting online. A finding from the 2005 Pew Internet & American
Life Project answered that.
The widely publicized Pew survey found a slightly higher number of
American women online than men. And in the current social networking
age, the ladies are still leading the pack. Multiple surveys,
including a 2010 comScore report, consistently show more female
engagement on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.
So when it comes to gender and the Internet today, the more pertinent
question isn’t whether more men or women are surfing the Net, but
whether they’re surfing the Net differently.
Take online communication, for instance. Real-world gender differences
translate to differences in Internet interaction as well.
“My research into the gender dynamics of online discussion forums
found that men tend to be more adversarial, and to tolerate
contentious debate, more than women,” Herring said. "Women, in
contrast, tend to be more polite and supportive, as well as less
assertive … and (they) tend to be turned off by contentiousness, and
may avoid online environments that they perceive as contentious.”
Those dynamics help explain why women have gravitated toward sharing
on social networking sites while men move toward public domain content
creation like Wikipedia, where articles can erupt with editing wars
between contributors.
“Sites such as Facebook are  'walled gardens'  -- users can select
their friends and in general have more control over who enters their
online space than in open forums, where any random person can come
along and harass them or start a flame war,” Herring explained.
“Facebook and Twitter are also oriented towards sharing personal
information and social exchange, which women and girls are more drawn
to do than men and boys are.”
Considering women’s active role on the Internet, online advertisers
and sites are working to overcome certain gender barriers that have
naturally arisen and finding new ways to attract larger female
audiences.
In the case of Wikipedia, for instance, founder Jimmy Wales along with
the Wikimedia Foundation have set a goal to increase its female
contributor base to 25 percent by 2015.
And for younger generations growing up wired (or wireless) the
ever-evolving Web landscape could become a more gender-neutral space
with men and women equally engaged in social networking, content
creation and collaboration.
“The Web seems to be evolving towards a better overall gender
balance,” Herring said. “That is, instead of mostly male environments,
there are now some environments in which females participate very
actively as well.”
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
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