Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Why Don't More Women Contribute to Wikipedia?

by Amar Toor on January 31, 2011 at 02:00 PM

sue gardner
To most people, Wikipedia represents the ultimate in egalitarian encyclopedias. It's a place where any Internet user can go to add their own knowledge on virtually any subject in the world, regardless of individual expertise or background. But recent statistics show that, in spite of its intrinsic openness, Wikipedia's playing ground may not be as level as it seems -- especially when it comes to gender.

Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation released a survey showing that just 13-percent of Wikipedia's contributors were female. The study, conducted by a collaborative center at the United Nations University and Maastricht University, inspired Wikimedia executive director Sue Gardner (pictured above) to launch new efforts to raise that figure to 25-percent by the year 2015 -- not as a part of some larger, principle-driven campaign, but for the sake of Wikipedia's quality. "This is about wanting to ensure that the encyclopedia is as good as it could be," Gardner told the New York Times. "The difference between Wikipedia and other editorially created products is that Wikipedians are not professionals, they are only asked to bring what they know."

Evidence of this online gender gap abounds. Entries for stereotypically "female" products, like friendship bracelets, tend to be relatively short, compared to those for more male-oriented subjects, like baseball cards. The page on 'Sex and the City' includes brief summaries for each episode, while the entry on 'The Sopranos' features substantially lengthier discussions.

Joseph Reagle, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and author of 'Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia,' speculates that a large part of this discrepancy could be attributed to the online culture in which Wikipedia first arose. The site's early contributors ascribed to a certain hacker-like ideology that favors openness and digital anarchy over externally imposed rules -- even if those rules are intended to foster greater diversity. "It is ironic, because I like these things -- freedom, openness, egalitarian ideas," Reagle explained. "But I think to some extent they are compounding and hiding problems you might find in the real world."

Overcoming this deeply ingrained ideological hurdle is the task that Gardner now faces. For the moment, she's decided to use her foundation to indirectly encourage more women to contribute, rather than launching wider recruiting efforts or advocating for gender quotas. "Gender is a huge hot-button issue for lots of people who feel strongly about it," Gardner said. "I am not interested in triggering those strong feelings."

Many agree that this indirect approach is less likely to ruffle the feathers of the Wikipedia community, but it's unclear whether or not Gardner's efforts will succeed in bringing about real change. Catherine Orenstein, founder and director of the OpEd Project, suggests that Gardner's biggest hurdle may not be institutional, but psychological. "When you are a minority voice, you begin to doubt your own competencies," she said.

Tags: contributor, diversity, encyclopedia, equality, gender, GenderDifferences, GenderEquality, information, men, sex, study, SueGardner, top, Web, wikipedia, women

Comments

1

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular