Gender bias on Wikipedia is the overweighting of male perspectives and topics, resulting from the phenomena that men being more likely than women to be volunteer contributors and be the subject of Wikipedia articles. , the English Wikipedia had almost 400,000 biographies of women, representing about 20% of total biographies. Wikipedia has no significant difference in readership, yet coverage of topics and individuals skews towards men.
As of 2024, 80% of active Wikipedia editors globally were male, 14% were female, 5% were gender diverse, and 4% chose not to state their gender.
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). 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.
A 2021 study found that, in April 2017, 41% of biographies nominated for deletion were women despite only 17% of published biographies being women. 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". Language that is considered sexist, loaded, or otherwise gendered has been identified in articles about women. 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. 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.
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. In the United States, a 2015 study found that 15% of contributors were women.
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.
Comparison of results for the proportion of Wikipedia readers and editors from the nationally representative Pew survey and the WMF/UNU-MERIT survey (UNU) for a series of dichotomous variables in both surveys. Adjusted numbers for editors assume that response bias for editors is identical to observed response bias for readers and, in the rightmost column, that bias is stable for editors outside the United States. Table reproduced from this source.VariableReaders US (Pew)Readers US (UNU)Editors US (UNU)Editors US adj.Editors (UNU)Editors adj. Female 49.0 39.9 17.8 22.7 12.7 16.1 Married 60.1 44.1 30.9 36.3 33.2 38.4 Children 36.0 29.4 16.4 27.6 14.4 25.3 Immigrant 10.1 14.4 12.1 9.8 8.2 7.4 Student 17.7 29.9 46.0 38.5 47.7 40.3
In 2010, United Nations University and UNU-MERIT jointly presented an overview of the results of a global Wikipedia survey. 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". In 2013, the results of the survey were adjusted for non-response bias by Hill and Shaw using a propensity score estimation technique to suggest upward corrections to the data from the survey and to recommend updates to the statistics being surveyed, giving 22.7% (17.8% unadjusted) for adult US female editors and 16.1% (12.7% unadjusted) for all US female editors.
In February 2011, The New York Times followed up with a series of opinions on the subject under the banner, "Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?" Susan C. Herring, a professor of information science and linguistics, said that she was not surprised by the Wikipedia contributors' gender gap. She said that the often contentious nature of Wikipedia article "talk" pages, where article content is discussed, is unappealing to many women, "if not outright intimidating". Joseph M. Reagle reacted similarly, saying that the combination of a "culture of hacker elitism", combined with the disproportionate effect of a minority of high-conflict members on the community atmosphere, can make it unappealing. He said, "the ideology and rhetoric of freedom and openness can then be used (a) to suppress concerns about inappropriate or offensive speech as 'censorship' and (b) to rationalize low female participation as simply a matter of their personal preference and choice." Justine Cassell said that although women are as knowledgeable as men, and as able to defend their point of view, "it is still the case in American society that debate, contention, and vigorous defense of one's position is often still seen as a male stance, and women's use of these speech styles can call forth negative evaluations."
In April 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation conducted its first semi-annual Wikipedia survey. It suggested that 9% of Wikipedia editors are women. It also reported, "Contrary to the perception of some, our data shows that very few women editors feel like they have been harassed, and very few feel Wikipedia is a sexualized environment." However, an October 2011 paper at the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration found evidence that suggested that Wikipedia may have "a culture that may be resistant to female participation."
A study published in 2014 found that there is also an "Internet skills gap" with regard to Wikipedia editors. The authors found that the most likely Wikipedia contributors are high-skilled men and that there is no gender gap among low-skilled editors, and concluded that the "skills gap" exacerbates the gender gap among editors. During 2010–14, women made up 61% of participants of the college courses arranged by the Wiki Education Foundation program that included editing Wikipedia as part of the curriculum. Their contributions were found to shift the Wikipedia content from pop-culture and STEM towards social sciences and humanities.
In 2015, Katherine Maher, Gardner's successor as the director of the Wikimedia Foundation, argued that Wikipedia's gender bias "reflects society as a whole". For example, she noted that Wikipedia is dependent on secondary sources which have similar biases. She agreed that Wikipedia's editing process introduces biases of its own, especially as topics that are popular among its predominantly male editors draw more edits.
A 2017 study found that women participating in an experiment by editing a Wikipedia-like site tended to view other editors as male, and to view their responses as more critical than if the other editor was gender-neutral. The study concluded that:
A 2017 study by Heather Ford and Judy Wajcman observes that research on the gender bias continues to frame the problem as a deficit in women. In contrast, their central argument states that infrastructure studies in feminist technoscience allows the gender analysis to be taken to a further level. It looks at three issues within the infrastructure: content policies, software, and the legalistic framework of operation. It suggests that progress can be made through altering that culture of knowledge production through encouraging alternate knowledge, reducing the technical barriers to editing, and addressing the complexity of Wikipedia policies.
In their February 2018 article, "Pipeline of Online Participation Inequalities: The Case of Wikipedia Editing", Shaw and Hargittai concluded from their studies that solving the problems of participation inequality including gender bias requires a broader focus on subjects other than inequality. They recommended a focus on encouraging participants of all educational backgrounds, skill levels, and age groups to help Wikipedia to improve. They recommended further that informing more women that Wikipedia is free to edit and open to everyone is critical in eliminating gender bias.
In March 2018, mathematician Marie A. Vitulli wrote in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, "The percentage of women editors on Wikipedia remains dismally low."
In 2014, Noopur Raval, a PhD candidate at UC Irvine, wrote in "The Encyclopedia Must Fail!– Notes on Queering Wikipedia" that "making a platform open access does not automatically translate to equality of participation, ease of access, or cultural acceptance of the medium." In 2017, researchers Matthew A. Vetter and Keon Mandell Pettiway said that the white, cis-gendered male dominance among Wikipedia editors has led to the "erasure of non-normative gender and sexual identities", in addition to cis-gendered females, and that the "androcentric and heteronormative discourses" of Wikipedia editing insufficiently allow "marginalized gender and sexual identities to take part in language use and the construction of knowledge."
Causes
Collier and Bear's research suggests that the difference in contribution rates could be due to three factors: (1) the high levels of conflict in discussions, (2) dislike of critical environments, and (3) lack of confidence in editing other contributors' work.Statistics based on Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia editor surveys 2011 (Nov. 2010-April 2011) and November 2011 (April – October 2011) A published scoping review on the gender gap in Wikipedia found three main categories for these factors in academic literature: 'women problem' (blaming female characteristics), 'mirror effect' (blaming society but excusing Wikipedia), and 'systemic problem' (blaming the original male-dominated editor community).
The New York Times pointed out that Wikipedia's female participation rate may be in line with other "public thought-leadership forums". A 2010 study revealed a Wikipedia female participation rate of 13 percent, observed to be close to the 15 percent overall female participation rate of other "public thought-leadership forums". Wikipedia research fellow Sarah Stierch acknowledged that it is "fairly common" for Wikipedia contributors to remain gender-anonymous. A perceived unwelcoming culture and tolerance of violent and abusive language are also reasons put forth for the gender gap. According to a 2013 study, another cause of the gender gap in Wikipedia is the failure to attract and retain female editors, resulting in a negative impact on Wikipedia's coverage. As well, Wikipedia "...editors that publicly identify as women face harassment" from other Wikipedia editors.
Former Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner cited nine reasons why women do not edit Wikipedia, culled from comments by female Wikipedia editors: A lack of user-friendliness in the editing interface. Not having enough free time. A lack of self-confidence. Aversion to conflict and an unwillingness to participate in lengthy edit wars. Belief that their contributions are too likely to be reverted or deleted. Some find its overall atmosphere misogynistic. Wikipedia culture is sexual in ways they find off-putting. Being addressed as male is off-putting to women whose primary language has grammatical gender. Fewer opportunities for social relationships and a welcoming tone compared to other sites.