The Gender Gap on Wikipedia

Talk by Marielle Volz

[[User:Mvolz]]
@mariellevolz
marielle.volz@gmail.com

Disclaimer: I work for or provide services to the Wikimedia Foundation, but I am not representing the Foundation in this talk. Statements made in this talk are my own, and may not reflect the views of the Foundation.

The Significance of Wikipedia

"The free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit."

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment."- Wikimedia Foundation

Global Popularity

Site	Domain	Alexa top 50 global sites (As of January 31, 2018)	SimilarWeb top 50 sites (As of December 2017)	Type
Google	google.com	1	1	Internet services and products
YouTube	youtube.com	2	3	Video sharing
Facebook	facebook.com	3	2	Social network
Baidu	baidu.com	4	4	Search engine
Wikipedia	wikipedia.org	5	5	Encyclopedia

Source: CC-BY-SA-4.0 Wikipedia

Traffic

Source: Wikimedia Report Card

Negligible Reader Gap

Figure source: Sarah476 CC-BY-SA-4.0

Are our editors representative of our readers?

Significant Editor Gender Gap

< 1/4 of registered Wikipedia editors are women

This is a list of surveys that have been conducted to get at the editor gender gap. Please note that these are not corrected surveys but the raw data. For instance Hill and Shaw 2016 used Pew Surveys to correct the 13% figure at the bottom here to 16%. However, even if these are an underestimate of the total number of registered editors, we still have a significant problem as the most prolific users are more likely to be male. So the percentage of total content produced by women is likely even smaller than the total percentage of male editors. Also please note that these are somewhat geographically biased because most of these surveys are done on English Wikipedia, although there are some global south surveys in this chart as well. Welsh Wikipedia actually has a gender bias in the other direction, 55% of registered editors there are female!

Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

Why are women less likely to edit?

Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

The Content Gender Gap

Is the editor gender gap reflected in the content on Wikipedia?

Biography Gender Gap

The Women in Red project has closed the gap from 14% to 17.49% in English Wikipedia.

Is Wikipedia particularily biased when it comes to women's biographies?

Coverage bias

Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

Structural bias

Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

Lexical bias

Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

Visibility bias

Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

The Invisible Content Gap

Data source: Schrijver, Paul (2016-05-25). “Gender gap on Wikipedia: visible in all categories?”. University of Amsterdam. (bachelor thesis)
Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

What categories are gendered?

Data source: Schrijver, Paul (2016-05-25). “Gender gap on Wikipedia: visible in all categories?”. University of Amsterdam. (bachelor thesis)
Slide source: Netha Hussain CC-BY-SA-4.0

Intersectional Gaps

Who else are we missing?

What percentage of Wikipedians are mums?

Blog post: Why women have no time for Wikipedia
My response:What Percentage of Wikipedia Editors are Mums?

Why edit?

The Wonder Weeks

Source: 16 Jan 2018.The diabolical genius of the baby advice industry. The Guardian.
Screenshot used under fair use doctrine.