[Gendergap] fyi: Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica

[Joseph Reagle]

Hello Ryan,

On Friday, September 02, 2011, Ryan Kaldari wrote:
> * Do you know what the ratio of male to female contributors is at 
> Encyclopedia Britannica?

No, unfortunately not. It'd be great to have that data and -- as we note -- to have a comprehensive listing of all biographies in EB.

> * Why the emphasis on female biographies? It seems like a weak indicator 
> of gender bias (as reflected by the WikiSym study). Do we really know 
> that women are significantly more likely to write about women than men 
> are? If so, how much more likely?

Unlike the WikiSym study, we are not able to draw connections between the contributors and their contributions. While the gender gap in contribution certainly inspired the work, we're focused on gender bias in content. As we note briefly in the paper, a member of the feminism task force said that much of a contribution there came from mail contributors.
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