Gender bias on Wikipedia is the phenomenon that men are more likely than women to be volunteer contributors and article subjects of Wikipedia (although the English Wikipedia has almost 400,000 encyclopedic biographies about women, men have about four times as many), as well as the lesser coverage on Wikipedia of topics primarily of interest to women.[1][2]
In a 2018 survey covering 12 language versions of Wikipedia and some other Wikimedia Foundation projects, 90% of 3,734 respondents reported their gender as male, 8.8% as female, and 1% as other; among contributors to the English Wikipedia, 84.7% identified as male, 13.6% as female, and 1.7% as other (total of 88 respondents).[3] In 2019, Katherine Maher, then CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, said her team's working assumption was that women made up 15–20% of total contributors.[4]
A 2021 study found that, in April 2017, 41% of biographies nominated for deletion were women despite only 17% of published biographies being women.[5] The visibility and reachability of women on Wikipedia is limited, with a 2015 report finding that female pages generally "tend to be more linked to men".[6] Language that is considered sexist, loaded, or otherwise gendered has been identified in articles about women.[2] Gender bias features among the most frequent criticisms of Wikipedia, sometimes as part of a more general criticism about systemic bias in Wikipedia.
In 2015, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that the encyclopedia had failed to reach its goal to retain 25% female editorship.[1] Programs such as edit-a-thons and Women in Red have been developed to encourage female editors and increase the coverage of women's topics.[7][8]
Gender bias in participation
Efforts to measure gender disparity
The first study of world-wide presence in 2008 found that 13% of all editors were female, which, after a follow-up study in 2011, was reduced to 9% globally.[1] In the United States, a 2015 study found that 15% of contributors were women.[1]
In 2009, a Wikimedia Foundation survey revealed that 6% of editors who made more than 500 edits were female, with the average male editor having twice as many edits.
In 2010, United Nations University and UNU-MERIT jointly presented an overview of the results of a global Wikipedia survey.[10] A New York Times article cited this Wikimedia Foundation collaboration, which indicated that fewer than 13% of contributors to Wikipedia are women. Sue Gardner, then executive director of the foundation, said that increasing diversity was about making the encyclopedia "as good as it could be". Factors the article cited as possibly discouraging women from editing included the "obsessive fact-loving realm", associations with the "hard-driving hacker crowd", and the necessity to be "open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists".
Gender bias in content
In 2016, Wagner et al.[46] found that gender inequality manifests itself in Wikipedia's biographical content in multiple ways, including unequal thresholds for including an article on the person, topical bias, linguistic bias, and structural inequalities. The authors found that women with biographies on Wikipedia are slightly more notable than men on Wikipedia, and proposed three possible explanations for future research: 1) that editors are more likely to write about their own gender, 2) that men are more likely to create articles about themselves, and 3) that external sources make women less visible.[46] As for topical bias, biographies about women tend to focus more on family-, gender-, and relationship-related topics. This is especially true for biographies of women born before 1900. The authors also found structural differences in terms of meta-data and hyperlinks, which have consequences for information-seeking activities.
Article creation and deletion
Of the 1,960,452 biographical articles on the English Wikipedia in September 2023, only 385,236 or 19.65% were about women.[47]
Reactions
Wikipedia has been criticized by some academics and journalists for having primarily male contributors,[11][68][69] and for having fewer and less extensive articles about women or topics important to women.
Writing for Slate in 2011, conservative political commentator Heather Mac Donald called Wikipedia's gender imbalance a "non-problem in search of a misguided solution". Mac Donald asserted, "The most straightforward explanation for the differing rates of participation in Wikipedia—and the one that conforms to everyday experience—is that, on average, males and females have different interests and preferred ways of spending their free time".[70]
In 2013, Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation at the time, said of the gender gap, "I didn't solve it. We didn't solve it. The Wikimedia Foundation didn't solve it. The solution won't come from the Wikimedia Foundation."[71]
Efforts to address gender bias
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation has officially held the stance, since at least 2011 when Gardner was executive director, that gender bias exists in the project. It has made some attempts to address it but Gardner has expressed frustration with the degree of success achieved. She has also noted that "in the very limited leisure time women had, they tended to be more involved in social activities instead of editing Wikipedia. 'Women see technology more as a tool they use to accomplish tasks, rather than something fun in itself.[71][76] In 2011, the Foundation set a target of having 25 percent of its contributors identifying as female by 2015.[11] In August 2013, Gardner said, "I didn't solve it. We didn't solve it. The Wikimedia Foundation didn't solve it. The solution won't come from the Wikimedia Foundation."[71]
In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation put a funding of $500,000 in building a more encouraging environment for diversity on Wikipedia.
See also
- Racial bias on Wikipedia
- Geographical bias on Wikipedia
- Second-generation gender bias
- Systemic bias in Wikipedia
Further reading
Media coverage
- Bort, Julie (15 February 2014) "A Growing Army of Women Are Taking on Wikipedia's Sexism Problem". Business insider. Retrieved 29 August 2022.
- - Introduction and links to eight opinions.
Research and advice
External links
References
- Nicole Torres. Why Do So Few Women Edit Wikipedia? Harvard Business Review, 2016-06-02, retrieved 2020-06-26^
- Jenny Kleeman. The Wikipedia wars: does it matter if our biggest source of knowledge is written by men? www.newstatesman.com, 26 May 2016, retrieved 2020-06-26^
- Community Insights/2018 Report/Contributors - Meta