----- Original Message ----
From: Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org To: gendergap Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, February 16, 2011 12:51:48 PM Subject: [Gendergap] Fwd: [PRESS] Discovery News: Is There A Gender Gap
Online? <snip>
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.
<snip>
Completely anecdotal but I had an interesting conversation with my sister on Jan 15. She happened to be in-town staying the weekend with me and my hosting duties conflicted with the last minute WikiX meet-up so I asked her to come. In talking about this she asked me, "What do people use Wikipedia for anyways?" I couldn't believe she had really been unexposed to WP so I took her iPhone found the Google app and went through the whole alphabet on letter at a time to see her previous searches (BTW with her permission!). None of them would have brought her to Wikipedia. The large majority of them were shopping related. She has her BA, was a pharma rep until recently becoming a SAHM. Her traditional nuclear family with 2.5 kids has two laptops, an older desktop, and some kind of system that allows the TV to be a internet browser. Age-wise she falls in-between GenX and the Millennials. She uses the internet daily. Online she is really into coupons, shopping, and plans to start a cooking blog. And she honestly hadn't come across Wikipedia enough to understand what it was. Before this conversation I would have never believed that someone who considers becoming a blogger would had no understanding of what Wikipedia was and why people *used* it (i.e. as opposed to why they edited it).
In comparison, we are about the same age and spend about the same about of time online in our daily lives. However, I live alone, never finished my degree, work at an unremarkable office job, own a single laptop, don't even have a smart phone, but I have edited Wikipedia and Wikisource since 2006. I suspect it is the more basic life-style differences rather than the internet based ones that fuel the gender gap.I think this study raises a good point the internet participation, or likely a life-style well integrated with internet technologies, has no correlation with Wikipedia editing. The internet isn't what it was ten years ago. So while good internet access is imperative for participation in the wikis, the internet is too big and ubiquitous for us to assume any longer that everyone with good internet access will be brought to Wikipedia. Even though that was true in the past.
Complete speculation: I think this shows up stronger with women than men, because more men were early adopters back when the internet invariably led to Wikipedia. I don't think that amoung populations just getting good internet acces today that this gender gap will be quite so large. Although I still believe that the fact the interesting-to-men-topics have been so well-covered in Wikipedia by those male early adopters will ensure that the gender gap continues without intervention. (i.e. the gap might shrink in these populations because we will gain less of the men rather than gaining more women.)
Birgitte SB