Well she no longer works. But certainly she had little use for it (and little time for the internet at all) when she did work. I do occasionally use Wikpedia for work to confirm chemicals being asked for (i.e. Was Muriatic Acid another name for Hydrochloric acid or Hydrofluoric acid) Chemical names are very non-standard on the application side. For five years an co-worker from Albania had been asking people for where in the hardware store he might find the Calcium Hydroxide for a special recipe. He knew it was a commonly used item but had been completely unable to locate it in America and everyone would tell him they had never heard of it. Finally I looked it up on Wikipedia and said "Oh you want LIME." And that is the majority of my work-time usage of Wikipedia, figuring out answers for the water-cooler.
Birgitte SB
----- Original Message ----
From: Sandra sandratordonez@gmail.com To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, February 16, 2011 4:59:14 PM Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Fwd: [PRESS] Discovery News: Is There A Gender Gap Online?
Brigitte I bet it's also that she doesn't use for wikipedia for work. I think there was some study that showed that wikipedia and similar sites (in japan or England maybe) were accessed during work hours. I wish i could remember the details
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 16, 2011, at 5:37 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
----- 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
- 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
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