Gender gap/lt

...and while you're at it, don't forget to mind the gap!

The Art & Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, in Chicago on February 1, 2014. Part of the purpose of the edit-a-thon was to address issues of the gender gap

There is a gender gap in Wikipedia and the other projects in the Wikimedia Movement . This page exists to help store information and ideas and to catalog projects that are trying to close that gap.

Are you from the press or media? Are you writing a story about the gender gap or gender issues on Wikipedia and sister projects? Contact presswikimediaorg to connect with community members who are subject matter specialists.

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The gender gap has long been known to exist in computer-related occupations, and indeed the Wikimedia community was aware of this issue from the very early days.

The first large-scale publication that attempted to quantify the gap was a survey conducted by the United Nations University and published in March 2010.

• Glott, Ruediger; Schmidt, Philipp; Ghosh, Rishab; et al. (March 2010). "Wikipedia Survey - Overview of Results" (PDF). UNU-MERIT. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 July 2011.  CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. (link)
• Glott, Ruediger; Schmidt, Philipp; Ghosh, Rishab; et al. (March 2010). "Quality of Wikipedia Content" (PDF). UNU-MERIT. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 July 2011.  CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. (link)
• Glott, Ruediger; Schmidt, Philipp; Ghosh, Rishab; et al. (March 2010). "Reasons for non-contribution" (PDF). UNU-MERIT. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 July 2011.  CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. (link)
• Glott, Ruediger, and Ghosh, Rishab; Ghosh, Rishab (March 2010). "Age and Gender Differences" (PDF). UNU-MERIT. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 July 2011. 

However, as with any online survey where participation is not random, it gives biased results that do not permit us to quantify the gender gap precisely.

This page seeks above all to act as a hub for resources and information about Wikimedia's gender gap, and to adequately quantify the gender gap, in particular by presenting studies on the subject and by collecting anecdotal evidence about why women leave or never join Wikipedia.

Read

A selection of articles about the gender gap (for more English-language articles, see Gender gap task force/Media and research):

• Unlocking the Clubhouse: Five ways to encourage women to edit Wikipedia, Sue Gardner's Blog, November 14, 2010.
• Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List, Noam Cohen in the New York Times, January 30, 2011.
• Where Are the Women in Wikipedia? Debate with a number of debaters, New York Times, February 2, 2011.
• Wikipedia(EN) Signpost Issue on Gender Gap, February 7, 2011.
• Top 10 Reasons to Encourage more Women Participation in Wikipedia here on Meta, February 8, 2011.
• </> Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia (in their own words), Sue Gardner's Blog, February 19, 2011.
• Wikipedia's gender gap and the complicated reality of systemic gender bias, Adrianne Wadewitz in HASTAC, July 26, 2013.
• Gender Gap Manifesto, created March 2011 by seven Wikimedia editors.
• "Charting Diversity: Working together towards diversity in Wikipedia." Wikimedia Deutschland cooperated with the Beuth University of Applied Science to write a paper about diversity in Wikipedia. It begins with a review of the situation in the German Wikipedia and then offers different concepts and possibilities about how to improve diversity in Wikipedia. August 2014.

Research articles:

• Antin, J.; Yee, R.; Cheshire, C.; Nov, O. (2011). "Gender Differences in Wikipedia Editing". WikiSym. 
• Collier, Benjamin; Bear, Julia (2012), "Conflict, criticism, or confidence: an empirical examination of the gender gap in Wikipedia contributions", Proc. of CSCW, doi:10.1145/2145204.2145265 
• Laniado, David; Castillo, Carlos; Kaltenbrunner, Andreas; Fuster Morell, Mayo (Aug 27–29, 2012). "Emotions and dialogue in a peer-production community: the case of Wikipedia" (PDF). WikiSym. Linz, Austria: ACM Press. 
• Stine Eckert; Linda Steiner (2013). "(Re)triggering Backlash: Responses to News About Wikipedia’s Gender Gap". Journal of Communication Inquiry 37 (284): 284–303. doi: 10.1177/0196859913505618. 
• Hill B.M., Shaw A. (2013). "The Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with Propensity Score Estimation". PLoS ONE 8 (6). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065782. 
• Lam, S. K.; Uduwage, A.; Dong, Z.; Sen, S.; Musicant, D. R.; Terveen, L.; Riedl, J. (2011). "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance". WikiSym. 
• Sook Lim; Nahyun Kwon (2010). "Gender differences in information behavior concerning Wikipedia, an unorthodox information source?". Library and Information Science Research 32 (3): 212–220. doi: 10.1016/j.lisr.2010.01.003. 
• Steiner, Linda; Eckert, Stine (2012). http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p550635_index.html. 

A brief survey of existing research findings is in-progress at Research:Gender_gap. You can help improve it!

Watch

• Sumana Harihareswara's talk "Hospitality, Jerks, and What I Learned"

Research

The initial research that increased attention on this issue was from a UNU survey, the results of which can be viewed and downloaded at wikipediasurvey.org (archive). However, like all surveys where who responds is self-selected, it was biased towards certain types of demographics, and it gives us only a rough working idea of how big the gender gap is.

While we discuss practical projects for inviting women to edit (see the section below), we should think about how measuring the gender gap accurately can be done. We should also collect some anecdotal stories about why women leave Wikipedia or never join to begin with, as a way of showing people what the gender gap feels like on a more personal level.

Discuss

The gender gap mailing list is the best place to talk about this with other people who are interested and can help. Started on January 31st, 2011, it has a mix of longtime Wikimedians and people from other fields who arrived through their interest in the subject, so it's helpful to introduce yourself in your first post.

Since this is a sensitive topic, the mailing list has a simple code of conduct. The gist is, be considerate and constructive. That means:

• No personal attacks.
• Try to stay on topic and take other things off-list.
• Try to turn fighting into constructive discussion, or disengage/take it off-list.
• Help guide discussion toward concrete action.
• Be aware that using an aggressive or argumentative tone (or even just posting too much) can discourage people from participating.

Participate

You don't have to join the mailing list or read the recent press to help correct the gender gap. You don't need to have edited before either! If you're interested, the following projects need the help of women and men alike to be successful, so don't be shy about joining in.

Resources within Wikimedia communities

• Check out the list of proposals for more female editors. A lot these come from the mailing list, and you can add more.
• Draft letter(s) for outreach to women friends and networks.
• Gender Gap resources An attempt to create a comprehensive, sortable list of relevant resources. In progress.
• Outreach Village Pump is a good place to discuss outreach to women.
• Wikimedia Diversity Conference
• The Wikipedia Teahouse is a friendly place that helps new editors become accustomed to Wikipedia culture, ask questions, and develop community relationships. It was especially created with women in mind.
• The Wikipedia Workshop for Women (originated by WikiProject India) suggests workshop content, provides lists of past and upcoming workshops, as well as a list of Wikipedia editors who have conducted and/or will conduct workshops for women interested in editing Wikipedia. Part of Wikipedia Workshop.

Projects within Wikimedia communities

• on English Wikipedia:
  • Gender gap task force
  • WikiProject Feminism
  • WikiProject Women's History
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Women artists
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Women writers
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish Women
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's sport
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Women - proposed, at Wikimedia IdeaLab
  • Wikipedia:Women's Kaffeeklatsch - test alternative to WikiProject Women
• Danish Wikipedia for kvinder
• French Projet:Femmes
• Polish Wikiprojekt:Gender Studies
• Spanish Wikiproyecto:Feminismo
• Spanish Wikiproyecto:Ciencia, Tecnología y Género
• Swedish Wikipedia:Projekt kvinnor

• Women on Wikipedia Month 2011 events for March and International Women's Day
• WikiWomen's History Month ongoing project
• Wikimedia WikiWomenCamp May 2012 event in Buenos Aires
• NY Wiki Chics, a New York outreach project by Wikimedians
• Wikimedia Diversity Conference A international conference in November 2013
• WikiWomen's Collaborative, a volunteer driven initiative to bridge the gender gap
  • Research: WikiWomen's Collaborative

Related projects in other communities

These will have useful information, but aren't necessarily organized by or run for Wikimedia communities.

• Ada Initiative, a non-profit working to increase participation of women in open technology and culture
• Anita Borg Institute, a social enterprise founded on the belief that women are vital to building technology that the world needs
• GeekFeminism, a blog
• Geek Feminism Wiki, a Wikia site
• Wikipedia Women, a public Facebook group
• Wikipedia Systers - coming February 2015; an Anita Borg Institute Systers forum for women Wikipedia editors
• WikiWomens Collaborative, a Facebook community page born of the WikiWomen's Collaborative