Gender gap/Resources

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Gender Gap

Surveys, reports[edit]

From June 2022 through September 2022, the Global Data & Insights team collected data from more than 3000 Wikimedians from all over the world through the Community Insights survey. These data help paint a picture of our Movement's demographics and communities' social and technical experiences. They also tell us whether we are progressing towards the 2030 Strategic Direction and help to guide the Foundation in better understanding how to support Wikimedia volunteers across roles. This data is graciously provided by our committed communities, who keep the Wikimedia projects alive, and provide free knowledge to the world.


During the 2019–2020 fiscal year, the Wikimedia Foundation awarded 256 grants to mission-aligned organizations and people around the world, totaling $8,473,787. Looking forward, grants are expected to be a primary driver towards Knowledge Equity, notably through the Community Resources' Grants Strategy Relaunch, which aims to align grantmaking with the Strategic Direction and Movement Strategy Recommendations, specifically the recommendation of Ensuring equity in decision-making. The Relaunch includes consultations with the communities to explore the role of the Foundation and of the communities in grant programs and processes, and to discuss equitable allocation of funds. We still have significant progress to make to break down historical structures of power and privilege, and to offer substantial and more equitable funding to grantees in lower- and middle-income countries.

In late 2019, the Global Data & Insights team (formerly Learning & Evaluation) collected data from more than 2500 Wikimedians from all over the world through the Community Insights survey. These data help paint a picture of our Movement's demographics and communities' social and technical experiences. They also tell us whether we are progressing towards the Wikimedia Foundation’s Medium Term Plan goals and the 2030 Strategic Direction.

In 2017, 65 Wikimedians who lead gender equity projects sat down for interviews with Rosiestep. These conversations explored the unique challenges and successes of their work to advance gender equity on Wikimedia projects. This report provides a succinct overview of what we learned from them.

Fostering learning to improve support to Wikimedia communities. Summary of data from over 4,000 participants who answered 170 survey questions that are focused around our annual goals from 2016–17. These goals related to several themes, some of which relevant to the Gender Gap such as What is the diversity of Wikimedia communities? or What is the current health of Wikimedia communities? Related to community health, are Wikimedia communities inclusive?

Documents, Mapping, Data sources...[edit]

Ongoing. More than 90 of the best databases on registration. For free for wikipedians

Last update 2017. But still worth it.

aims to track the presence of women both on the boards and in the leadership of affiliated Wikimedia groups, as well as the main bodies of the movement and the Wikimedia Foundation. The idea is to have a more accurate vision of how many women are taking positions of leadership and thus promote more equity in our movement.

Mind the Gaps (en, fr)

Written for the Wiki Loves Women project by Anthere, spring 2015.

Here is a draft of an email you can adapt to fit your own desires and audience (i.e., age/family status/educational level/etc.). Feel free to tweak this draft. If others have other drafts to offer, create a new dated section and include your signature.

An attempt to create a comprehensive, sortable list of relevant resources. Last update 2014.

A list of resources about gender diversity in Wikipedia articles.

Resources for online and offline events, welcoming tools[edit]

Through the #WikiHerStory initiative, Wikimedia Foundation Communication Team is sharing key facts about the gender gap, projects working to address it, and how you can get involved. Get the facts and resources. How to get involved. Last update 2020.

(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. Last update 2015.

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.

Atelier pratique pour aider toute personne souhaitant organiser un évènement Art+Féminisme.

Tools to analyse and illustrate gaps[edit]

Humaniki provides statistics about the gender gap in the content of all Wikimedia projects

Denelezh provides statistics about the gender gap in the content of Wikimedia projects. (Deprecated, nonfunctional)

A directory of useful Wikimedia-related tools, including tools for metrics and working more efficiently.

An interactive notebook which measures gender diversity in entities mentioned in a Wikipedia article.

An interactive notebook which computes gender statistics about the collection of biographical articles created by a user.

Categories, lists and other similar pages[edit]

All gender learning patterns collected over time on meta

An historical page meant to coordinate women activities during Wikimania. Could be revived one day...

An historical page where female participants list themselves...

Category related to Gender Gap on Wikimedia Commons. Images, presentations, videos, logos and more etc.

For a safe contribution[edit]

short, easily accessible summary of some best practices that may be useful when you are organizing an event.

Identifies, builds and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe.

Support and Safety training modules on outreachdashboard

Aims to provide safer and more secure spaces on its platform.

A multi-year project of research, product development, and policy growth to help the Wikimedia volunteer community to reduce the level of harassment and disruptive behavior on our projects. This initiative addresses the major forms of harassment reported on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Research:Harassment survey 2015, which covers a wide range of different behaviors: content vandalism, stalking, name-calling, trolling, doxxing, discrimination, anything that targets individuals for unfair and harmful attention.

The Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation launched the Online Learning Pilot, an online capacity-building project in February 2021. This course focused on developing skills that help volunteers respond to on- and off-wiki harassment.

Financial support and gender gap related grants[edit]

There are different grant opportunities from the Wikimedia Foundation as well as from other organizations (such as Wikimedia chapters) to fund your project ideas to reduce the gender gap. In July 2021, the Grant system is completely changed.

List formerly successful grants asked by groups or individuals from the community to Wikimedia Foundation and other organizations in relationship to Gender Gap

Related projects in other communities[edit]

A non-profit working to increase participation of women in open technology and culture.

A social enterprise founded on the belief that women are vital to building technology that the world needs.

Diversity and inclusion in free and open source software communities.

History[edit]

The Wikimedia community was aware of the gender gap from its earliest days, but the first large-scale study that tried to quantify it 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).  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.

First attempts to measure the gender gap. We also collected 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.

Historical collection of 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.