New research, WikiChix
New research
A paper titled "WP:Clubhouse? An exploration of Wikipedia’s gender imbalance", to be presented next month at WikiSym 2011 by a team from the University of Minnesota, was posted online on August 11. The team of seven researchers became interested in the imbalance after the January 31 New York Times front-page article on Wikipedia's gender gap (see earlier Signpost coverage: January 31, February 7) and sought a more data-driven analysis of the issue, as opposed to the by now traditional "here is a random 'male'-article, here is a 'female'-article, they are different lengths" approach.
Accompanied by a press release and audio/video summaries from the university, the paper has been widely covered by external media sources—see In the news.
The study confined itself to editors who self-disclosed their gender via a userbox on their user pages or through their user preferences. As the paper notes, this may have introduced a bias, and the gender as self-reported by users (and in particular vandal accounts) may not always reflect the truth.
- Findings
- 16% of Wikipedia accounts created in 2009 (who state their gender) belong to women.
- 9% of edits from the 2009 cohort are made by accounts belonging to women. A chart plotting gender ration over edit count (similar to one published previously in the Signpost: "Wikipedia's gender gap examined further") further shows that "the gender gap is more pronounced when looking at high-activity editors".
- The gender gap has not changed significantly over the past five years.
- There were significant differences in gender ratio by subject area,
| Area | Percentage of women editing |
| People | 10.7% |
| Arts | 10.4% |
| Philosophy | 8.3% |
| Religion | 7.1% |
| Health | 7.1% |
| History | 6.7% |
| Science | 5.2% |
| Geography | 3.7% |
- Articles where the percentage of female contributors was higher than average tended to be shorter than articles where the percentage of male contributors was higher than average; articles where the gender ratio was closest to the site average were the longest.
- The hypothesis that the "coverage of topics with particular interest to females is inferior to topics with particular interest to males" was also confirmed in a second test – the only one in the paper that did not rely on Wikipedians' self-reported gender: using data on the gender of movie raters on their own MovieLens site, the researchers found that when controlling for some other factors, "articles about 'female' movies are shorter than ones about 'male' movies", and also received a lower quality rating in WikiProject Film's article assessment.
- Women are more likely to edit userpages and user talk pages than men, and men are more likely to edit articles and all other namespaces.
- Women are more likely to seek adoption in the adopt-a-user program.
- Women are more likely to become administrators than men with similar edit counts.
- Women are more likely to vandalize as new users (60% of vandal accounts reporting their gender were women).
- Women are more likely to be reverted when they have very few edits (7% vs 5%); however, in accounts with more than eight edits, the effect disappears.
- Women are no more likely to leave after being reverted than men.
- Women and men were blocked at essentially the same rate (4.39% of female users and 4.52% of male users have ever been blocked).
Brief news
- WikiChix at Wikimania: A write-up of the WikiChix lunch at Wikimania has been published at outreach:WikiChix Lunch 2011 by Wikimedian Sarah Stierch, who also blogged about an "epiphany" she had at the event: "Sometimes all it takes is an invitation".
- Gender-gap mailing list stagnating: On the Wikimedia Gender gap mailing list inaugurated in February, there were 105 postings in May, 46 in June, 36 in July, and only 5 so far this month. Interested users are encouraged to become involved.
- New tool analyzes article contributors' gender and location: A new tool called "Wiki Trip" displays the gender of the contributors to a specific Wikipedia article, as well as their geographic provenance – restricted to those edits where such information is available, as in the University of Minnesota study. Examples: Friendship bracelets, used in the article in The New York Times mentioned above, as an example of a poorly developed article on a "teenage girls'" topic, has received 100% male edits, whereas in baseball cards, one of the "lengthy articles on something boys might favor", 6% of the editors are estimated to have been female. A few other results: NASCAR 98% male, feminism 91% male, Twilight (series) 55% female.
Discuss this story
The "Wiki Trip" tool also provides food for thought on other aspects of possible systemic bias. For example, in both Battle of Iwo Jima [1] and Battle of Midway[2], edits from one of the two countries involved outweigh those from the other by more than 60:1. Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:31, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a woman and have self-identified as such on my userpage for nearly five years, but even after all this time other users still refer to me as "he" or "him" fairly regularly. That might come from an implicit just-us-guys-here assumption without having looked at my userpage, or maybe refering to anyone as "she" or "her" is too easily construed as an insult (!) ... I wonder whether specifying female in my user preference "used for gender-correct addressing by the software" will make next year's projections more accurate by one data point ;P – Athaenara ✉ 11:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Calling female Wikipedia editors chicken or chix will surely help. To your attention: User_talk:Sue_Gardner#May_I_ask_you_a_courtesy.3F. Regards, Catfisheye (talk) 15:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the comment: "Women are more likely to vandalize as new users", can we trust that vandals are reporting their gender properly? GoingBatty (talk) 16:44, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to read Stierch's blog post, but the text was forced off the screen to the right, and there was no scrollbar. Advice? --Orange Mike | Talk 17:10, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Personal benefit apparently isn't the only driver of edits. I checked Planned Parenthood[3] (an organization that provides services primarily to women) -- 522 edits by men vs. only 11 by women. --Orlady (talk) 22:12, 16 August 2011 (UTC)ǐ[reply]
I can't access the file, but I was wondering if there was any more data on the quality of articles on films of more interest to women. If they were rated less highly by WikiProject Film, does that reflect the preferences (in terms of style and content, not subject) of the presumably mostly (being Wikipedians) male respondents? Is there any data on the gender of the respondents, and are these articles rated differently by men and women? Also, how do the quality and length of these articles scale with the total number of contributors compared to gender-neutral articles ? I suppose that articles of little interest to the majority of editors are bound to be of a lower quality simply because of the smaller editor pool they draw on, is this factored in? Rainbowwrasse (talk) 08:55, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot state emphatically enough that even if participation at Wikipedia between genders is not equal, that it does not mean anything is wrong with the community or current policies. There are other factors at work (genetic, social, and so forth) that could fully explain the imbalance. Unfortunately, this research (which, upon my quick reading, seemed to throw in occasional unwarranted conclusions extrapolated from their data) is going to be interpreted to spearhead policy changes to combat non-existent gender discrimination. Thanks in large part to careless and reckless press releases and statements by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is now in the public conscious that Wikipedia has a sexist male-exclusive culture. This makes me angry! It is untrue for starters but furthermore it bothers me that the slander comes from vocal but near-sighted people working for the Foundation. As far as I can tell, the policies set forth in WP:CIVIL, WP:HARASS, and WP:PERSONAL make Wikipedia a sex-equal environment. End of story. If women are not choosing to participate — and they clearly aren't at the same rate as men — that is a different issue. I encourage the Foundation to advertise with directed marketing to women... so long as there's equal directed marketing asking men to contribute. I would view it as sexist to preferentially encourage women to participate. [Directed marketing is good because it is more effective.] The idea that women think they "have more important things to do" than contribute to Wikipedia (mentioned again in the video by the paper's authors) comes up again and again. Clearly, this would be a fruitful idea to target in any directed advertising to women. Lastly, as Wikipedia is a volunteer community, you cannot force people to be volunteers. Ultimately, you get who you get. So trying to force a 50/50 ratio is misguided. The role of the Foundation should be to make sure that Wikipedia is not discriminatory. But this job is already done! I see little barrier to participation (except economic, which we have no power to fix). Therefore I find all user studies largely just mere curiosities upon which no action should usually be taken. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
One of the gender-identification problems is that it is not easy to find out the gender of a user, particularly within a discussion. Rainbowwrasse, I can scroll over your username to find out how long you've been here and how many edits you have, but not your gender. Most of the time, it would be too much of a hassle to go read your userpage in hopes that it might identify your gender. Gender-specific usernames help (like LadyofShalott or my own), but that probably just encourages more stereotyping. I must also agree to never having viewed it as a boys club, or experiencing any type of prejudice against my gender. PrincessofLlyr royal court 20:13, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting observations, but I wouldn't sign up to anything that calls me a 'chick', thanks. I wonder whether Wiki Trip is that accurate? I checked out an article I created and to which I have been the major contributor, Batu Lintang camp, (I have made 344 edits; the next highest count is 16 by User:Grant65). Wiki Trip says that 9 registered editors are male and none are female: I have identified as female on my user page since November 2006. It also shows editors as being located solely in North America and the UK, whereas User:Grant65 is in Australia. A lot of my editing has been in military history, a subject area that might be considered more male-oriented, and I have never sensed that I have been treated differently because of my gender. Jasper33 (talk) 17:10, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]