[Gendergap] Research into causes of the gender gap?

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Johannes Rohr
<johannes.rohr at 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_active_female_editors_contribute,
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