research-article

WP:clubhouse?: an exploration of Wikipedia's gender imbalance

Authors:

Shyong (Tony) K. Lam,

Anuradha Uduwage,

David R. Musicant,

John RiedlAuthors Info & Claims

WikiSym '11: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration

Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/2038558.2038560

Published: 03 October 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Wikipedia has rapidly become an invaluable destination for millions of information-seeking users. However, media reports suggest an important challenge: only a small fraction of Wikipedia's legion of volunteer editors are female. In the current work, we present a scientific exploration of the gender imbalance in the English Wikipedia's population of editors. We look at the nature of the imbalance itself, its effects on the quality of the encyclopedia, and several conflict-related factors that may be contributing to the gender gap. Our findings confirm the presence of a large gender gap among editors and a corresponding gender-oriented disparity in the content of Wikipedia's articles. Further, we find evidence hinting at a culture that may be resistant to female participation.

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WP:clubhouse?: an exploration of Wikipedia's gender imbalance

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cover image ACM Other conferences

WikiSym '11: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration

October 2011

245 pages

ISBN:9781450309097

DOI:10.1145/2038558

Conference Chair:
Felipe Ortega
University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain
,
Program Chair:
Andrea Forte
Drexel University, Philadelphia

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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TJEF: The John Ernest Foundation

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SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 03 October 2011

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Division of Information and Intelligent Systems

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WikiSym '11

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WikiSym '11: The 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration

October 3 - 5, 2011

California, Mountain View

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Overall Acceptance Rate 69 of 145 submissions, 48%

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687062
Kraft ASoulier E(2024)Knowledge-Enhanced Language Models Are Not Bias-Proof: Situated Knowledge and Epistemic Injustice in AIProceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency10.1145/3630106.3658981(1433-1445)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3630106.3658981
KRIVAA LCOSCIA M(2024)TRACES OF UNEQUAL ENTRY REQUIREMENT FOR ILLUSTRIOUS PEOPLE ON WIKIPEDIA BASED ON THEIR GENDERAdvances in Complex Systems10.1142/S021952592450003627:03Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219525924500036
Centelles MFerran-Ferrer N(2024)Assessing knowledge organization systems from a gender perspective: Wikipedia taxonomy and Wikidata ontologiesJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-11-2023-023080:7(124-147)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2023-0230
Ferran-Ferrer NBoté-Vericad JMinguillón J(2023)Wikipedia gender gap: a scoping reviewEl Profesional de la información10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17Online publication date: 16-Dec-2023
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Ferran-Ferrer NBoté-Vericad JMinguillón J(2023)Wikipedia gender gap: a scoping reviewEl Profesional de la información10.3145/10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17Online publication date: 16-Dec-2023
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Farič NPotts HHeilman J(2023)Quality of Male and Female Medical Content on English-Language Wikipedia: A Quantitative Content Analysis (Preprint)Journal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/47562Online publication date: 24-Mar-2023
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Ford HPietsch TTall K(2023)Gender and the invisibility of care on WikipediaBig Data & Society10.1177/2053951723121027610:2Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
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