Dear all,
I recently joined this list as I am one of the persons in charge of the community-oriented goals which Wikimedia Deutschland has set for itself for the coming year, one of which is to increase female participation in Wikimedia activities & projects by 50% until the end of 2012, I am well aware that this is a very ambitious target, and I feel that in order to maximise the chances of meeting it, we will have to be as clear as we can about what are the main deterrents, preventing Wikimedia from developing the same way as the rest of the Internet in terms of narrowing the Gender gap. What is it that makes Wikipedia so different, that the seemingly natural disappearance of the gender gap which we have seen in the Blogosphere and in social media, seems to completely pass by the Wikiverse?
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?
Looking forward to any feedback,
Johannes
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Johannes Rohr johannes.rohr@wikimedia.de wrote:
Dear all,
I recently joined this list as I am one of the persons in charge of the community-oriented goals which Wikimedia Deutschland has set for itself for the coming year, one of which is to increase female participation in Wikimedia activities & projects by 50% until the end of 2012, I am well aware that this is a very ambitious target, and I feel that in order to maximise the chances of meeting it, we will have to be as clear as we can about what are the main deterrents, preventing Wikimedia from developing the same way as the rest of the Internet in terms of narrowing the Gender gap. What is it that makes Wikipedia so different, that the seemingly natural disappearance of the gender gap which we have seen in the Blogosphere and in social media, seems to completely pass by the Wikiverse?
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?
Looking forward to any feedback,
Johannes
-- Johannes Rohr
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Eisenacher Straße 2 10777 Berlin
It'd be interesting to see if the factors were consistent across language projects. I don't speak German, but I have heard on many occasions that the normal tenor and manner of discussions on de.wp is quite different than on en.wp. If that's true, it may mean that such environmental issues are less crucial than is often thought.
Nathan
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Johannes Rohr johannes.rohr@wikimedia.de wrote:
Dear all,
I recently joined this list as I am one of the persons in charge of the community-oriented goals which Wikimedia Deutschland has set for itself for the coming year, one of which is to increase female participation in Wikimedia activities & projects by 50% until the end of 2012, I am well aware that this is a very ambitious target, and I feel that in order to maximise the chances of meeting it, we will have to be as clear as we can about what are the main deterrents, preventing Wikimedia from developing the same way as the rest of the Internet in terms of narrowing the Gender gap. What is it that makes Wikipedia so different, that the seemingly natural disappearance of the gender gap which we have seen in the Blogosphere and in social media, seems to completely pass by the Wikiverse?
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?
Looking forward to any feedback,
Johannes
Hi Johannes,
There's been a few research studies on possible causes; some of them were presented at this year's WikiSym conference, and were reviewed in the Wikimedia research newsletter; see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2011-09-26#What_the_most_..., etc.
You might ask this question on the research-l list as well, for links to other studies. I'm not sure that there is consensus on what priorities are most important out of research that has been done to date, however.
best, phoebe
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:31 AM, Johannes Rohr johannes.rohr@wikimedia.dewrote:
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?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mind_the_Gap and Why people don't edit Wikipediahttp://ozziesport.com/2011/07/why-dont-people-edit-wikipedia-small-survey-results-provide-some-insights/ are two small studies I've done related to this. Both appear unique from some of the research being done.
Copying and pasting the important conclusions from Mind the Day:
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.
End quote.
Copying and pasting the important conclusions from Why people don't edit Wikipedia:
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.
End quote.
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. :(
Sincerely, Laura Hale
On 12/14/11 3:58 PM, Laura Hale wrote:
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. :(
I don't understand what this paragraph means. Can you explain a little bit more? I've read it a few times and I'm rather confused on what you're trying to explain.
Thanks,
Sarah
[[User:SarahStierch]] en.wp
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 8:03 AM, Sarah Stierch sarah.stierch@gmail.comwrote:
On 12/14/11 3:58 PM, Laura Hale wrote:
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. :(
I don't understand what this paragraph means. Can you explain a little bit more? I've read it a few times and I'm rather confused on what you're trying to explain.
The women joined this list because several people in our Australian community thought it would be a good resource for them when engaging in their outreach to increase female participation on Wikipedia. It turned out not to be that. In fact, the list confirmed the worst of the worst about Wikipedia and its efforts to reach out to women from an institutional point of view ; they no longer found any value in doing the work they had otherwise been doing after joining the list. (The work the had done prior to joining the list included speaking to women's groups of different types, having had one or two editing workshops and appearing on at least one radio program, possibly two.)
Sincerely, Laura Hale
From the studies and surveys that I've seen lately, the most prominent answer seems to be that women see less value in contributing to Wikipedia than men do (on average). Of course this raises more questions than it answers, but it could help to focus your efforts. For example, if you could get Angela Merkel (or other prominent Germans) to create Wikipedia accounts and promote that in the media, perhaps it would boost the perception of its importance. Another strategy would be to get articles about Wikipedia published in media that are targeted to women. Sorry that's not more scientific, but I hope it's helpful.
Ryan Kaldari
On 12/14/11 10:31 AM, Johannes Rohr wrote:
Dear all,
I recently joined this list as I am one of the persons in charge of the community-oriented goals which Wikimedia Deutschland has set for itself for the coming year, one of which is to increase female participation in Wikimedia activities& projects by 50% until the end of 2012, I am well aware that this is a very ambitious target, and I feel that in order to maximise the chances of meeting it, we will have to be as clear as we can about what are the main deterrents, preventing Wikimedia from developing the same way as the rest of the Internet in terms of narrowing the Gender gap. What is it that makes Wikipedia so different, that the seemingly natural disappearance of the gender gap which we have seen in the Blogosphere and in social media, seems to completely pass by the Wikiverse?
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?
Looking forward to any feedback,
Johannes
Quoting what Ryan said below.. Yes, this is something we've thought about when talking about closing the gap. I did a non-scientific study a few months back with women Wikimedians, who are English language speakers. The desire to see female role models and spokes people who are active editors and vocal participates in the movement is something desired. I do think that possibility has a real great opportunity to influence, especially in country's where chapters are prominent (like in Germany, Netherlands).
I also wholeheartedly believe that knowing the value of what Wikipedia and related projects *provides* and gives to the world is a really major draw for those of us who do contribute. I also believe that bad manners, poor behavior, over burdening policies and the stereotypical "geek culture" of Wikipedia turns some people off; I don't want to generalize; this is just me speaking from my own experience as a Wikimedian and what turns me off in regards to the culture.
If only Oprah was still on the air...I'd love to have seen Sue on Oprah ;-)
-Sarah [[User:SarahStierch]] en.wp
On 12/14/11 4:27 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:
From the studies and surveys that I've seen lately, the most prominent answer seems to be that women see less value in contributing to Wikipedia than men do (on average). Of course this raises more questions than it answers, but it could help to focus your efforts. For example, if you could get Angela Merkel (or other prominent Germans) to create Wikipedia accounts and promote that in the media, perhaps it would boost the perception of its importance. Another strategy would be to get articles about Wikipedia published in media that are targeted to women. Sorry that's not more scientific, but I hope it's helpful.
Ryan Kaldari
* Johannes Rohr wrote:
I recently joined this list as I am one of the persons in charge of the community-oriented goals which Wikimedia Deutschland has set for itself for the coming year, one of which is to increase female participation in Wikimedia activities & projects by 50% until the end of 2012, I am well aware that this is a very ambitious target, and I feel that in order to maximise the chances of meeting it, we will have to be as clear as we can about what are the main deterrents, preventing Wikimedia from developing the same way as the rest of the Internet in terms of narrowing the Gender gap. What is it that makes Wikipedia so different, that the seemingly natural disappearance of the gender gap which we have seen in the Blogosphere and in social media, seems to completely pass by the Wikiverse?
You are comparing a global project to build an encyclopedia with media for self-expression and communication. There are gender gaps in other areas. Lego for instance, where you build things from little bricks, in computing where people build information systems, in architecture where people build buildings, in civil engineering where people build bridges and dams, in construction, in production, where you also build things, and also in maintenance where people keep things once built in a con- dition so they keep performing the functions they were built for. This varies across regions but the trend is fairly consistent.
The Internet does not really matter here, other online projects where people build things also suffer from low female participation. I make open source software, very few women there, I make web standards, help design and define the technology that enable things like Wikipedia, you don't get to see many women there either, I follow the Demoscene, a competitive computer art sub-culture where men compete on who makes the best animations, computer graphics, digital music, and so forth, and when you spot a woman there it's probably a girlfriend. Female parti- cipation increases as you move towards individual self-expression, say creating fan-artwork, or as you mention blogs and "social media", I'd suppose product reviews, general "talk" forums and chats, and so on.
If all boys would, as they grow up, play nursing baby dolls, play having the neighbours over for dinner, dress up Ken with various clothes and accessories; and girls would be building lego space ships to conquer the galaxy, would command grand armies in computer games, would play with action figures of super heros that fight for truth and justice, who'd be writing Wikipedia then? I don't know the answer, but it seems obvious to me that in order to understand the Wikipedia "gender gap" you would have to understand how to reverse the roles, make it so Wikipedia is edited mostly by females, not just how to remove what some suspect a deterrent might be to increase participation by three or so percentage points. And so the most important answer you'll find in surveys is that women often are unsure why they should contribute to Wikipedia, while this seems to come naturally to men.
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.
If those were the main issues, you would have to address them in a form where the improvements only attract women without attracting more men to actually close the "gender gap", or at least disproportionally so. That may be rather difficult to achieve beyond the margins of error in sur- veys.
On 12/14/2011 7:08 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
You are comparing a global project to build an encyclopedia with media for self-expression and communication. There are gender gaps in other areas. Lego for instance, where you build things from little bricks, in computing where people build information systems, in architecture where people build buildings, in civil engineering where people build bridges and dams, in construction, in production, where you also build things, and also in maintenance where people keep things once built in a con- dition so they keep performing the functions they were built for. This varies across regions but the trend is fairly consistent.
The Internet does not really matter here, other online projects where people build things also suffer from low female participation. I make open source software, very few women there, I make web standards, help design and define the technology that enable things like Wikipedia, you don't get to see many women there either, I follow the Demoscene, a competitive computer art sub-culture where men compete on who makes the best animations, computer graphics, digital music, and so forth, and when you spot a woman there it's probably a girlfriend. Female parti- cipation increases as you move towards individual self-expression, say creating fan-artwork, or as you mention blogs and "social media", I'd suppose product reviews, general "talk" forums and chats, and so on.
When it comes to making real changes in the real world and building real things, males tend to be more possessive and territorial and competitive and play far rougher than females prefer; and far rougher than they do with males cause they don't want to be bested by a female. But they will just ignore the more "expressive" areas since that's not a competitive thing...
Hi Bjoern and all,
So in essence you are saying that Wikipedia is a game that boys like to play more than girls. And there is not much you can do about it, because editing Wikipedia is more like building Lego space ships than like playing with dolls?
What I was wondering about is, has this or any other hypothesis actually been substantiated with some real (quantitative or qualitative) research? Is there more that anecdotal evidence, providing some solid ground for us to set the right priorities?
Thanks,
Johannes
2011/12/15 Bjoern Hoehrmann derhoermi@gmx.net:
- Johannes Rohr wrote:
I recently joined this list as I am one of the persons in charge of the community-oriented goals which Wikimedia Deutschland has set for itself for the coming year, one of which is to increase female participation in Wikimedia activities & projects by 50% until the end of 2012, I am well aware that this is a very ambitious target, and I feel that in order to maximise the chances of meeting it, we will have to be as clear as we can about what are the main deterrents, preventing Wikimedia from developing the same way as the rest of the Internet in terms of narrowing the Gender gap. What is it that makes Wikipedia so different, that the seemingly natural disappearance of the gender gap which we have seen in the Blogosphere and in social media, seems to completely pass by the Wikiverse?
You are comparing a global project to build an encyclopedia with media for self-expression and communication. There are gender gaps in other areas. Lego for instance, where you build things from little bricks, in computing where people build information systems, in architecture where people build buildings, in civil engineering where people build bridges and dams, in construction, in production, where you also build things, and also in maintenance where people keep things once built in a con- dition so they keep performing the functions they were built for. This varies across regions but the trend is fairly consistent.
The Internet does not really matter here, other online projects where people build things also suffer from low female participation. I make open source software, very few women there, I make web standards, help design and define the technology that enable things like Wikipedia, you don't get to see many women there either, I follow the Demoscene, a competitive computer art sub-culture where men compete on who makes the best animations, computer graphics, digital music, and so forth, and when you spot a woman there it's probably a girlfriend. Female parti- cipation increases as you move towards individual self-expression, say creating fan-artwork, or as you mention blogs and "social media", I'd suppose product reviews, general "talk" forums and chats, and so on.
If all boys would, as they grow up, play nursing baby dolls, play having the neighbours over for dinner, dress up Ken with various clothes and accessories; and girls would be building lego space ships to conquer the galaxy, would command grand armies in computer games, would play with action figures of super heros that fight for truth and justice, who'd be writing Wikipedia then? I don't know the answer, but it seems obvious to me that in order to understand the Wikipedia "gender gap" you would have to understand how to reverse the roles, make it so Wikipedia is edited mostly by females, not just how to remove what some suspect a deterrent might be to increase participation by three or so percentage points. And so the most important answer you'll find in surveys is that women often are unsure why they should contribute to Wikipedia, while this seems to come naturally to men.
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.
If those were the main issues, you would have to address them in a form where the improvements only attract women without attracting more men to actually close the "gender gap", or at least disproportionally so. That may be rather difficult to achieve beyond the margins of error in sur- veys. -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
* Johannes Rohr wrote:
So in essence you are saying that Wikipedia is a game that boys like to play more than girls. And there is not much you can do about it, because editing Wikipedia is more like building Lego space ships than like playing with dolls?
I am saying that women are not driven to do this kind of thing; you'll hear from female non-contributors that they don't know why they should contribute. Almost a quarter of Wikipedia contributors also happen to contribute to open source software, even though they are probably less than a percent among users. They are driven to do this kind of thing.
There is much you can do about it, but you have to first understand it is a general societal thing; contributing to Wikipedia is not blogging, and so even if there is not much of gender gap in blogging, that does tell you anything about the gender gap among contributors to Wikipedia.
What I was wondering about is, has this or any other hypothesis actually been substantiated with some real (quantitative or qualitative) research? Is there more that anecdotal evidence, providing some solid ground for us to set the right priorities?
That women do not know why they should contribute to Wikipedia can be found in various surveys; beyond that I've not seen much of an attempt to underlying causes. Like in your initial question, people look for "deterrents", but not so much for motiviation or qualification beyond silly answer options like "I don't have enough information to share".
You would have to ask questions like whether non-contributors are used to collaborate with large and diverse groups of mostly strangers. You would have to ask what people (intend to) do for a living. When they've last been recognized by a stranger for having built or made something, online in particular, perhaps from someone living on the other side of the planet. If they tell their friends they made some article about the local monument, would they find that cool, or not care, or what else do they think the reaction would be. Are they used to write texts in some semi-formal, fact-oriented writing style? Are they used to some form of markup, "bbcodes" on a forum, formatting tags on their blogs, perhaps a CMS syntax they use at work? Is there something they would like to see covered in Wikipedia that currently isn't, and do they feel able to do the research needed to make one, even if they don't have the time? How would they like to be among the people who made Wikipedia?
Open source developers are hundreds of times as likely as women to be a Wikipedia contributor, they tend to "build stuff" for a living, they are likely to have experience with collaborating with strangers, they tend to write documentation in some non-personal writing style, they tend to have their contributions in this area recognized by their peers, they're likely to have experience with code, and so on. They probably often like this whole Sharing Stuff thing, the ability to find something online and add to it to make it better. Every time you load a Wikipedia page, it'll have run through hundreds of lines of code I wrote when in secondary e- ducation when friends of mine played some football game. I am quite sure I am getting a greater kick out of that than they got from their game.
Instead of looking at this, you get survey reports with "Percent of female editors who reported experiencing the listed harassment" where one of the "listed harassments" is "Someone tried to flirt with me".
On 12/17/11 3:54 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
- Johannes Rohr wrote:
So in essence you are saying that Wikipedia is a game that boys like to play more than girls. And there is not much you can do about it, because editing Wikipedia is more like building Lego space ships than like playing with dolls?
Almost a quarter of Wikipedia contributors also happen to contribute to open source software
[citation needed] :)
Ryan Kaldari
* Ryan Kaldari wrote:
On 12/17/11 3:54 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
Almost a quarter of Wikipedia contributors also happen to contribute to open source software
[citation needed] :)
Read [[File:Editor Survey Report - April 2011.pdf]] on commons; Q9.
Looks like your right. This is a pretty amazing statistic. If 23% of our editors are open source programmers, I can't believe we don't have more volunteer MediaWiki developers. I guess that's another gap we need to work on fixing.
Ryan Kaldari
On 12/17/11 6:13 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
- Ryan Kaldari wrote:
On 12/17/11 3:54 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
Almost a quarter of Wikipedia contributors also happen to contribute to open source software
[citation needed] :)
Read [[File:Editor Survey Report - April 2011.pdf]] on commons; Q9.