Translations:Gender equity report 2018/Barriers to equity/14/en

Lack of support for gender equity work

Though there is variation across contexts, a majority of interviewees describe a lack of adequate support for gender equity work. Many interviewees communicated a sense of isolation within the larger Wikimedian community. Here are some of the experiences that were described:

• “When you contacted me [for this interview], I was so glad. It made me realize how low a priority gender diversity was in my community. Though I am hopeless in my community that there will be change, maybe this will influence one person somewhere to contribute on this subject."
• “In [my country], we don’t have a core group [focused on gender equity] yet. We’re trying to build it. I have some support from [a neighboring country]. For example, Art + Feminism has women’s groups who served as mentors. This is because our female members have external pressures. We have to deal with pushback from our community. Women don’t want to expose themselves on issues such as this.”
• "We’ve tried to build up a core group, but it hasn’t been that easy to keep editors. Among the existing female editors, that have been active on wikipedia for years, they aren’t that interested in the whole gender gap issue. But among people we’ve gotten to know in the last couple of years, we have some who have attended several trainings or meetups. But there are very few who have kept on contributing for a longer period. I’m struggling to find a good method to get women to continue showing an interest and do the work."
• "We don’t have any groups related to gender diversity in my community. It’s all about single initiatives. They do the work themselves, and don’t put focus into groups. Maybe one of the reasons is that we lack females in our groups."