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Why Women Have No Time For Wikipedia
Andreas Kolbe writes Wikipedia is well known to have a very large gender imbalance, with survey-based estimates of women contributors ranging from 8.5% to around 16%. This is a more extreme gender imbalance than even that of Reddit, the most male-dominated major social media platform, and it has a palpable effect on Wikipedia content. Moreover, Wikipedia editor survey data indicate that only 1 in 50 respondents is a mother – a good proportion of female contributors are in fact minors, with women in their twenties less likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation efforts to address this "gender gap" have so far remained fruitless. Wikipedia's demographic pattern stands in marked contrast to female-dominated social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest, where women aged 18 to 34 are particularly strongly represented. It indicates that it isn't lack of time or family commitments that keep women from contributing to Wikipedia – women simply find other sites more attractive. Wikipedia's user interface and its culture of anonymity may be among the factors leading women to spend their online time elsewhere.
They are too busy complaining about the gender gap.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Well the genders are identical so it must be some social factor that the patriarchy is responsible for creating.
Yes i am aware of the irony of posting this AC. Though i prefer to think it makes my point.
Any time someone attacks anonymity, ask what they stand to gain by it. Ask what the platform that is promoting their article or post has to gain by it.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html
Read this, it'll open your eyes.
Wikimedia Foundation efforts to address this "gender gap" have so far remained fruitless.
Why must everything be gender balanced? Why not let women do what they want instead of trying to force them in to places that aren't necessarily their thing?
If women are actors instead of objects, they can make their own damn choices and do what they want to do without requiring others to try to sweeten the deal specifically for them to try to entice them.
Its not bias against women. its women choosing not to participate. End of argument.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Men in general seem to have less tolerance for what they perceive as error and a greater willingness to fight to correct error.
That's not the say that men are more often correct than are women. They just seem more eager to do battle, even if it is from behind a keyboard.
Anyone that's been involved in an edit war of wikipedia knows that the winner is often isn't the one with the best grasp of the facts, but it's the one least willing to give up the fight.
It is pretty easy to date the why. In 2006 there was a thing called the Userbox wars. There isn't a good page on wikipedia about this. Prior to 2006 Wikipedia user pages were sort of like myspace pages for wikipedia editors. They had lots of personal information and people chatted. Jimmy Wales wanted userspace to be about the encyclopedia. At the same time he didn't want mass deletions. There were mass deletions and the this wasn't easily reversed. The tone changed. This was one of the big steps towards the deletionists winning control of Wikipedia entirely. But if you want to know when the gender's changed this was a crucial moment.
Of course the deletionists winning even more battles probably didn't help
Links:
A few statements on Userboxes but not enough to understand what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
What "deletionists" are and what Wikipedia was like before them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Try having a fact-based discussion with a woman and see where it gets you.
On second thought, that doesn't work with men either . . .
There are no "likes" for Wikipedia edits, unlike Pinterest or Facebook posts.
Women are social creatures and require a feedback loop to keep contributing. Perhaps if we applied gamification to Wikipedia we might get a more balanced participation as the participants would receive some feedback (positive acknowledgements, achievements, whatever) to keep them motivated to contribute.
It's not like there is anyone out there telling women that they cannot contribute to Wikipedia or Open Source projects or even Redis. If you want to participate, then just DO it already.
And so, I find the attempts to "attract women" just so we can continue to hide our heads in the sand about the natural skew of participation due to NO ONE'S FAULT to be a wash.
I welcome women, of course, but don't believe in these rather condescending "outreach" programs. They always fail because they all are about ignoring the hard realities of human nature.
How the percentages look like for normal, old-school encyclopedias? I know that for example in case of school textbooks gender ratio might be even skewed towards woman (at least in my country) - which is probably a side effect of majority of teachers being woman (83%). But encyclopedias? I cannot find any data on data - but looking at chief editors of Brittanica, all of them were man...
I think that problem lies somewhere before age of 25. At some point during early education, there is some kind of bias/peer pressure/whatever which makes woman being interested in other things. Putting Hello Kitty pictures in background of wikipedia is not going to help afterwards ;)
How about not asking about gender on account registration and assigning a random username?
It'll make it hard to claim that Wikipedia treats females differently.
Hi there. 21/F who has contributed to Wikipedia in various ways since high school. I know there's no way to believe that, and the proof of burden relies on me, but I'll just have to ask for your benefit of the doubt.
The gender gap question is something that always used to pop into my mind while in high school, a time when the media wasn't too concerned about reporting on gender drama and the internet. Now that I'm older, and I've settled the difference within myself and everyone around me, it seems to be the fetishized topic of every formerly apathetic or neutral website I go to.
I have settled on the fact that it is a combination of mostly nature with a little nurture added in that produces this gap in demography. I think males are more naturally inclined to want to collect facts, devote themselves slavishly to organizing things and work without human interference. That is to say, the quite low incidence of these common traits ['nerdyness'] is lower in females than it is in males, but it's still uncommon across the board.
This is where the nurture part comes in. Contemporarly American culture seems to be absent of the cultural tropes and stereotypes of a bookwormish, nerdy female -- the kind that would be perfect devoting their time to Wikipedia. I know the cultural trope exists in other cultures like Japan [Sheska from FMA:B, or Princess Jellyfish even? anyone?] in stronger form, and that leads me to think that the already small number of female nerds would be disinclined to practice their dominant mental attribute because they don't see it emulated anywhere around.
This is also why you'll hear a lot of ranting and raving about women being 40-60% of the gaming population, but events like EVO and Awesome Games Done Quick are still shining sausagefests. Or why women technically use computers as much as men, but FOSS projects are still entirely wholly staffed by males. Few men and even fewer women are inclined to do repetitive, emotionless tasks, and those fewer women who might be inclined to do so are sometimes or usually driven out by either toxic male culture or toxic female culture.
I dunno. I only got shit for being 'nerdy', playing video games, and loving computers by other women. It's a self-perpetuating culture, and amongst females, the tendency is to seek validation and conformity as opposed to 'going your own way' -- despite what individualist American culture tells us.
There are no "likes" for Wikipedia edits, unlike Pinterest or Facebook posts.
Women are social creatures and require a feedback loop to keep contributing.
So pretty much the same reason that in youtube videos done by men the camera is pointed at the thing the speaker is talking about whereas in youtube videos done by women the camera is pointed at the woman's face.
Men's natural thought process tends toward "this this this" whereas with women it's "me me me".
As a teacher with 35 years under his belt, I posit that men and women are different. In my - admittedly limited and anecdotal, and restricted to younger that 18yrs - experience there is a different communication mindset with girls compared to boys (women compared to men?) . I constantly see girls in groups of 8 or so with often one queen bee, and lots of conversation, whereas boys are generally in smaller groups and are quite happy to insult each other, throw a punch and grunt. Facebook emulates what I see in the yard with girls, Wiki-whatever emulates what I see in the yard with boys. Shoot me down if you feel the need to do so.
I am FeralOink on WP (shhhhhhhhhh ;o) I have Commons open on my adjacent browser tab right now!
I haven't been run off when editing articles about most topics of interest to me. This is even true for controversial articles e.g. Edward Snowden, AIG, Reptilians, Freedom Fries, cryptocurrency, Ambassador Chris Stevens, David E. Shaw, Codex Alimentarius, MongoDB and brassiere. Some articles are emotionally sensitive to other editors, e.g. Murray Rothbard, Ven currency, so I avoid them. It is easy to discern the situation. I have even made some horrific mistakes, deleting a huge chunk of Gen. Ghaddaffi's article was the worst, yet I was amazed that once I explained and apologized (I had also broken a genuine WP rule), the regulars on the article were very understanding. The only incidents of truly rude encounters and massive reverts of hours of my work has been for female-relevant articles. Both pertained to cunnilingus. I am still seething with irritation at the use of crappy references (Cengage Learning books instead of CDC or reputable websites), bare links, sloppy Google books citation without templates and bizarrely tangential content. Also... well, enough.
Wikipedia does omit a lot due to male PoV, even if unintentional. Here's an example. John Nash's sister wasn't mentioned at all in his bio, and his pre-university education was incorrectly modernized. Also, his wife is a graduate of MIT, a physics major in the class of 1956 or so. That's when Nash met her. His bio didn't mention that, but instead dwelt on her father "being of Argentine extraction"!
There are lots of little cliques that I sense, infer, and camaraderie. It would be great to be a part of that.
tempus fugit
Absolute truth. Women as a group tend to be more emotionally mature, and apt to avoid senseless conflict.
I've been on the board of a non-profit which whose members are predominately women, usually middle aged women. I also run a company where about 3/4 of the employees are women. Furthermore I grew up in a household where I was the only male most of the time. I can assure you that women are as a group absolutely not more (or less) emotionally mature than men and if anything women are more likely to engage in senseless conflict. HOW they fight is very different. More passive-aggressive, backbiting, alliance building, etc. It's like watching some crappy reality vote-the-other-guy-off-the-island show. In some ways women's conflict tactics are even nastier than the ones men typically employ. Guys might actually try to beat the crap out of each other (physically or verbally) but women will try to exile each other from social groups.
Anyone who thinks women's average level of maturity is higher than men's has either been watching too many sitcoms or never been around actual women for any meaningful period of time. Women tend to react to conflict differently but that doesn't mean they are any more mature about it. Men are no better but they aren't any worse either.
I think it's true that women enjoy working as part of a team, where there is a feedback loop. One area where women do disproportionately well in Wikipedia, I think, relative to their numbers, is the Featured Articles process which brings articles up to Wikipedia's highest quality standard (there are a few thousand such articles, identified by a gold star). This is usually constructive team work, and women do enjoy it. You also get teams of two or three women collaborating to bring an article up to FA standard, and the results of such collaborations can be outstanding. This is probably the sort of thing Wikipedia needs to encourage more.
I don't agree that women's thought process is "me me me" vs. men's "this this this". If you look at Pinterest for example, it's all "this this this". What is true is that women do enjoy a real social component to the work, rather than just an imagined one.
Can anyone tell me why I don't see more articles about the gender gap in elementary eduction? There is a HUGE 87% to 13% gender imbalance there that hasn't changed in decades. And yet I don't ever seem to see any articles about it anywhere. All I see are tons of articles about much smaller imbalances in the STEM fields.
Someone? Anyone?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I thought it might be - well, let us say, instructive - to simply re-post some of the choicer responses to this story, all modded up to +4 or +5.
Because the "social justice warriors" tell you it must be. And if they don't get their way, they'll whine, cry, and call it rape.
Men in general seem to have less tolerance for what they perceive as error and a greater willingness to fight to correct error.
Man? Have you ever dated?? Women are the single most argumentative, must be right, cant change their minds, NEEDS AN APOLOGY EVEN WHEN PROVEN WRONG group out their.
the big problem on Wikipedia is that most edit hurt feelings, especially when you write a lengthy article about your favourite celebrity and someone come behind you and rape all your work with facts. Such senseless rigour are symptom of the patriarchy.