Wiki... Women?

Reasons for the lack of women on Wikipedia

The lack of confidence among women in their abilities and knowledge, like Sofia's when she started editing, compared to the sense of security men feel in the public sphere, is one of the reasons that hinders their active participation in Wikipedia.

In addition, the women interviewed in the research presented other factors for stopping editing.

Not only are there fewer women creating and editing content on Wikipedia, but those who do leave sooner, and some dedicate less time to editing.

Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Castellanos-Pineda, Patricia; Minguillón, Julià; Meneses, Julio (2021). The gender gap on the Spanish Wikipedia: Listening to the voices of women editors

Women identify barriers such as:

• The negative reputation
• Anonymity
• Fear of being questioned due to the lack of time to deliberate on a content deletion proposal.
• Alienation
• The property of knowledge

The women editors, mostly university graduates, such as Sofia, who has recently become a mother and has family responsibilities, face challenges due to the unequal distribution of the domestic responsibilities and lack of time to edit.

The women problem

The lack of contribution of women as editors results in a lack of representation of women's contributions to the world.

Women tend to retire from Wikipedia editing sooner than men, and face challenges in receiving critical feedback. 

The self-demand of women regarding the quality of the content they produce leads them to postpone its publication or leave it unfinished.

Emotional factors also contribute to the low female participation. Some female editors have reported feelings of isolation, sensitivity to conflicts and criticism, reluctance to make their opinions public, and a desire to discuss them in groups.

Some women find Wikipedia intimidating due to a lack of self-confidence and the perception that the work they do is inferior to that of men. At least, that’s what happened to Sofia when, after adding her contribution to the biography of the English author, her entry went into a discussion process where other users, mostly men, criticized her for the poorly cited references.

When Sofia faced the discussion process at the entrance, she felt intimidated and like many other women, to avoid arguments -and because with the little time they have they prefer to dedicate it to creating content-, abandoned the editing process.

While men tend to be overconfident in their abilities and knowledge, the challenge motivates them even more and they persevere in editing.

The other face

The woman is the focus of the problem and it is not considered, for example, that men can also write about women.

But how does Wikipedia and its discussion process work?

The functioning of Wikipedia depends on the participation of volunteers to create, edit, and maintain or delete articles. The deletion process occurs through several methods: speedy deletion, proposed deletion, and deletion by consensus. Speedy deletion is used for clear and indisputable cases, such as vandalized or duplicate pages. In these cases, any editor with administrator permissions can delete the article immediately. Proposed deletion involves a seven-day discussion period during which editors can debate whether an article should be deleted or not. The article is deleted automatically if no editor objects. Lastly, deletion by consensus is a more extensive process that involves a detailed community discussion, where editors present arguments for and against keeping the article, followed by a vote to decide whether to delete it. Discussions about article deletions take place on separate pages of Wikipedia dedicated to this purpose. Each language has its own page, usually with a title like "Articles for deletion." Regardless of the decision, user discussions are not deleted.

In the case of articles dedicated to biographies, the main arguments used to request their deletion are criteria related to admissibility (notability) and the sources of information used (verifiability).

There are slight differences in the types of arguments used depending on whether the biographical articles are about men or women. The difference is mainly due to the number of arguments presented. As a general rule, if a biographical article is proposed for deletion, the number of votes to either keep or delete tends to be higher for articles about women than for those about men. This is because female editors mobilize to save the article, either by presenting arguments in favor of keeping it or by improving the text with more sources. Biographies of women are often considered not notable and are more likely to be deleted.

Ramirez-Ordoñéz, David and Ferran-Ferrer, Núria (2023). “Endurance against oblivion: The analysis of the deliberations of the Article for Deletion with gender perspective. WikiWorkshop2023, May 11.

A Nobel Prize eliminated

A notable example of how this system works is the case of the deletion of Donna Strickland's page, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018. Before receiving the Nobel, Strickland was known for her work in lasers, but her page was deleted from Wikipedia because editors believed it did not meet the notability criteria. When an attempt was made to create her page, it was rejected because there were not enough reliable sources to demonstrate her notability at that time. Although she was a distinguished scientist with a notable career, the lack of significant media coverage of her work, along with the ongoing questioning in deliberations related to gender, resulted in the denial of her entry on the platform.

Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Centelles, Miquel; Macià, Yessica; Juan-José Boté-Vericad; Minguillón, Julià (2024). Dones de categoria: anàlisi del biaix de gènere a les categories de Viquipèdia. Xarxa Vives d’Universitats; Centre de Recerca en Informació, Comunicació i Cultura (CRICC), Universitat de Barcelona.

This case reflects the issues of gender bias, as women and other historically marginalized groups do not receive the same attention or coverage. After winning the Nobel Prize, the situation changed dramatically. The international recognition she received with the award provided the necessary evidence of her notability, and the page was created immediately.

This incident highlighted some of the limitations and challenges of Wikipedia's governance system. It emphasized the importance of secondary sources in validating notability and how the current criteria can be too restrictive in some cases. Furthermore, it revealed a possible gender bias in the application of notability criteria, as many female scientists do not receive the same visibility as their male counterparts.

The mirror effect

The mirror effect refers to understanding Wikipedia as a mirror of society: Wikipedia has a gender imbalance because society does.

Similarly, the media creates a mirror effect with society and with Wikipedia. Appearance in the media is one of the criteria for recognizing someone as public interest or notable, and women have less time and interest in self-promotion in the media, which works against them when it comes to appearing on Wikipedia.

However, the mirror effect not only 'reflects' existing imbalances to the same degree but also amplifies and perpetuates them, as it turns information into knowledge, determines what we know about our present and past society, and shapes how we transmit what becomes historical facts.

The other face

The biggest problem with the "mirror effect" is that it absolves Wikipedia of any responsibility, as according to this theory, the encyclopedia is a direct result of society and is exempt from the added value it can contribute in its creation or editing.

The systemic problem

If the "mirror effect" creates a bidirectionality between society and Wikipedia to explain gender imbalances, "the systemic problem" provides a 'zoom out' to explain the gender bias of the encyclopedia as a consequence of larger phenomena beyond its control.

The social dynamics of heteropatriarchy, the cancel culture of the internet, and the reductionism of the media are some of the reasons cited.

Many hopes were placed on Wikipedia for being a pioneer in its ability to create a safe environment for female participation in content curation for knowledge, but it has proven impossible for an encyclopedia to overcome the social imbalances in which it exists.

The other face

Some authors point out the lack of internal policies on Wikipedia to correct these gender inequalities in content creation and editing.

"The current dynamics of Wikipedia, along with its basic principles of notability, verifiability, and neutrality, contribute to a self-perpetuating cycle that hinders the increase in female editor participation and perpetuates the gender gap."

Ferran-Ferrer, Núria, Boté-Vericad, Juan José., & Minguillón, Julià (2023). Wikipedia gender gap: a scoping review. Profesional De La información, 32 (6).

Women in danger of extinction on Wikipedia

Even after an article about a woman is published on Wikipedia, it is at risk of being deleted.

Editors "with privileges", known as administrators, and mostly men, can propose that an entry be deleted, typically due to "lack of notability".

Articles about women are deleted faster than new ones are created, so content about women, if this trend continues, would be at risk of disappearing.

"The progression of women's articles that are deleted is much greater than the articles that are created again"

Ramirez-Ordoñéz, David and Ferran-Ferrer, Núria (2023). Endurance against oblivion: The analysis of the deliberations of the Article for Deletion with gender perspective. WikiWorkshop2023, May 11.

There are biographies that will not be deleted, such as that of Marie Curie, or unusual content, like biographies of female porn stars written by male editors. However, as seen, entries of famous women, such as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Donna Strickland, were deleted before she received the award because the references did not seem relevant.

If this continues, women editors like Sofia, and the content about women who publish, may become extinct.

For example, the article about Gemma Mengual on Viquipèdia (in Catalan) is categorized under "synchronized swimmers" (in the masculine, despite the fact that all but one of the individuals included identify as women).

Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Centelles, Miquel; Macià, Yessica; Juan-José Boté-Vericad; Minguillón, Julià (2024). Dones de categoria: anàlisi del biaix de gènere a les categories de Viquipèdia. Xarxa Vives d’Universitats; Centre de Recerca en Informació, Comunicació i Cultura (CRICC), Universitat de Barcelona.

Indexing and categorization are key for users to find the information they are looking for during their navigation and to avoid reinforcing the idea that women do not do things worthy of appearing on Wikipedia.

Proposed solutions

'Editathons' or editing marathons, a race against inequality.

One of the elements that can help mitigate the persistent gender imbalances are self-organized events such as editing marathons (called 'editathons'), which are strategies to promote the inclusion of women in this male-dominated environment.

In these professional environments specifically designed for editing Wikipedia content, women participate more actively as they are occasional and regular events, providing a dedicated space and time window for this purpose.

This breaks with the usual dynamic where Wikipedia editing is voluntary and unpaid, which often extends working hours and reduces time dedicated to other unpaid tasks at home and child-rearing, where women continue to play a primary role.

For women, Wikipedia is made at home (not in the office), and having to take care of other unpaid caregiving tasks at home causes them to abandon editing the platform more quickly and more frequently.

Female editors highly value 'editathons' as they promote a group experience of debate, exchange, and an opportunity to share work that makes them feel accomplished when they can afford to participate. This was the case for Sofia, when she learned about a meeting of the group of women who regularly gather and edit Wikipedia together at the university where she studied, and she was finally able to edit the entry of the English author.

Although they are good initiatives, and there are more of them each time, they often lack continuity because women, individually, do not return to edit. After a while, Sofia went back to editing alone at home during her Wikipedia session, and the cycle repeated itself: low self-esteem, domestic burdens, the lack of references to cite women, criticism in the discussions...

Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Laura Fernández; Centelles, Miquel (2024). Wikipedia’s Front-page 10 years evolution, Forthcoming .000 portadas analizadas

The promotion of a change in Wikipedia's internal culture.

Wikipedia's proactivity, for example, through the promotion of internal policies to encourage the participation of female editors, could help address the lack of representativeness, establish diverse spaces for discussion and debate on revised articles, and mitigate the systematic deletion of entries about women.

Authors of various studies make a direct call to the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Movement to develop gender representativeness policies, support training initiatives for editors, and promote inclusive content creation.

As long as Wikipedia's editors are mostly white men from privileged backgrounds, with higher education and a certain level of purchasing power, Wikipedia will have a representational problem of society.

The empowerment of women is one of the many steps Wikipedia must take to ensure the inclusion of all gender diversities, such as non-binary and transgender people, and beyond gender, in matters of race, religion, ethnicity, and other minorities that are part of the society that Wikipedia aims to describe.

Conclusions

In a world with a representative Wikipedia...

Wikipedia has a transformative power over society, as it not only reflects it but can also shape it.

As a reference encyclopedia in educational settings at all levels, if Wikipedia is able to make a qualitative leap in terms of diversity, inclusion, and representativity of society, those who use it in the development of their formal and informal education will be able to form a much more realistic, rich, and respectful understanding of their environment, which will multiply its impact with each generation. It is also important to consider that AI predominantly uses Wikipedia's content corpus in its responses. If this content contains biases, AI amplifies and perpetuates them.

To effectively close the gender gap, it is necessary to better understand Wikipedia's knowledge production culture, rooted in its encyclopedic and open nature, which may conceal exclusionary practices. The gender division on Wikipedia is determined not only by the editors but also by the underlying infrastructure logic. The goal is not just to reduce bias but also to make Wikipedia a more robust, reliable, and transparent platform for knowledge production.

The sample

Studies cited

• Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Boté-Vericad, Juan-José; Minguillón, Julià (2023). Wikipedia gender gap: a scoping review. Information professional, v. 32, no. 6, e320617.
• Núria Ferran-Ferrer, Miquel Centelles, Yessica Macià, Juan-José Boté-Vericad and Julià Minguillon (2023). Category Women: Analysis of gender bias in Wikipedia categories
• Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Fernández, Laura; Centelles, Michael. (2024) Wikipedia’s Front page 10 years evolution: analysis of gender and intersectionalities on content, newsroom guidelines and volunteer-driven insights in the Spanish and English editions
• Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Ramírez-Ordóñez, David (2022). ANDeffects of the absence of women as protagonists in the media: The case of Wikipedia a II Conference on Journalistic Ethics, November 25, Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya.
• Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Laura Fernández; Centelles, Miquel (2024). Wikipedia’s Front-page 10 years evolution, Forthcoming .0
• Latest publications: https://www.ub.edu/wikiwomen/publications/