Wikipedia
is a free encyclopedia with more than 3.5 million articles in English. It
differs from other encyclopedias because anyone is able to add and edit
information. However, surveys have shown that less than 15 percent of
Wikipedia’s contributors are women. The New York Times conducted a debate in
order to try to understand some of the reasons for this imbalance. According to
Susan C. Herring for men and women, the main reason why they did not contribute
to Wikipedia is because they were intimidated by the tone of the discussion,
thus women gave this reason more often than men did.
In addition, women tend to phrase their
informative messages as suggestions, while men assert their opinions as
“facts”. In Wikipedia the non-assertive style preferred by many women is not
accepted. Wikipedia reinforces the “neutral point of view” which goes in
accordance with male communication styles. Another important aspect that
Herring brings to light is that for long men were considered to be part of the
public domain. Wikipedia being a multi participant encyclopedia is public.
Therefore, because men have a greater sense of public entitlement, they are
more likely to make contributions online.
Another
question that comes to mind is, why is it so important for women to contribute
to Wikipedia? According to Justine Cassell the reason why we care about this
gender imbalance is because Wikipedia is considered to be “citizen- generated
media” and if 50% of the citizens are not participating, it is something to
worry about. Wikipedia is everyday becoming more powerful, and if women are not
contributing to this body of knowledge, then the information that is offered to
us will only reflect the knowledge of some.
I
believe that another reason why women do not contribute as much as men do is
because they are too busy. Women have many more responsibilities. Women usually
have full time jobs and also have to take care of the home and the kids. This
leaves them with less time to engage is these activities.
In
conclusion I believe that the many reasons why women do not contribute as much
as men do are associated with the idea of male dominance. Through out time it
has been thought than men are the ones who state the facts and determine what
is valuable information and what it not. Thus, things are changing and women
are becoming increasingly engaged in the production of knowledge. However, we
still have a long way to go, in order to reach equality with men.
What are some other reasons why women contribute less than men? What are some solutions to this problem?
I've never really given much thought to adding to Wikipedia. I'm just not interested. When I offer input, I like to be accurate, so before I would even add anything to Wikipedia, I would need to search high and low to ensure it was solid information. And, like it was mentioned, I'm super busy like I'm sure many other women are. I don't mind being a spectator in this case.
ReplyDeleteHowever, myself aside, I do feel that women should be encouraged to make submissions to Wikipedia. Women have a lot to contribute to society and I'm sure the Wikipedia site would benefit from this.
Because wikipedia is frowned upon within the institution of learning, i tend to shy away from the use of the website even in my personal life. i understand that when pertaining to the addition of information one must include sources of ones findings but i still do not quite trust some one else's work ethic and commitment to being 100% correct and having current information. Why contribute to something that all institutions of learning frown upon? There are no incentives or recognition to the addition of information on wikipedia. i just do not see the importance of a website that is not held to the highest standard within the education community. if this were some sort of educational website funded by a institution of education with highly regarded authors and you told me that women were not contributing i would be worried, but in the case of a website I'm not even allowed to use any of the information found on it, the effect non existent.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that in the article women tended to phrase their informative messages as suggestions and offers rather than facts like men did. The men seem to be indenial in differentiating between their opinions and facts which women aren't. But an article would actually sound more believable if you don't add "I think". I never thought about actually contributing to the website and personally when I do write about a subject I tend to add "in my opinion" which is ironic because that's what the article stated. I add "my opinion" because I believe that my opinion is strong and want to let it be known that what is being stated is my point of view. I barely use wikepedia because it is not a strong source for information. I may use it to get an idea of a subject that I have no knowledge of and then continue to dig deeper into other sources.However, women should be worried that men are dominating this website because mostly their opinions are being shared.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that women use the buffer "in my opinion" before speaking out loud or using the phrase as a preface in a literary paper. I tend to use "in my opinion" or "I think this because..." as a preface when I speak in class. In noticing who is saying what in class I've found that females usually preface what they want to say with a buffer mentioned above. Males tend to just say what's on their minds. I've tried to refrain from using them, but I think by using some kind of clause it contributes to expressing a complete thought and allows others to follow what you're trying to say more easily.
ReplyDeleteI do think women and men should be equal participants in terms of contributing to any sources of information frequently used on the Internet, but Wikipedia doesn't have the greatest reputation for being reliable. Sometimes it's a decent resource when I'm looking up quick information on something trivial, but I wouldn't rely on it for an important topic. So it doesn't really bother me that women don't really contribute. As some of you said above, it would be a different situation if it were an academic resource that was highly regarded.
ReplyDeleteThough i do agree with some of the points you made about women not contributing as much as men due because of the lack of time, I do not think women participate less to the contribution in Wikipedia because they are scared of dominating the discussions or having more of an informative tone. Though Wikipedia is a great way to voice facts and sometimes opinions, if you are biased to a certain subject, it is a very unreliable source that many stray away from because it is based on the knowledge of another person and usually not on facts and most people do not want to associate themselves with that. Like everyone stated, participation in women might be higher if it was on a higher standard of academic research.
ReplyDeleteI believe that woman should contribute more to Wikipedia . It is free game on the website to add information as long as you know the facts . As woman we should prove that we are equal to men and share the same knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI remember that one day I tried to edit some information I encountered on Wikipedia that I knew for a fact was wrong. I don't really remember the process but I do remember that I never ended up actually editing the site. I remember automatically thinking as I began writing, "what if I'm wrong and what it says is actually true?" "What if I change it and the workers at Wikipedia change it back and think look at what this idiot wrote?" Thoughts like these kept popping up in my head and eventually I just said forget it, even though originally I knew I was right. This may be my own personal experience but self-confidence prevents me from editing Wikipedia as a women. I also believe is is the same reason why some women don't edit the site. In society in order for a woman to be considered intelligent they have to be able to prove it much more often compared to men. This lack of self-confidence explains the difference in language between men and women such as using "in my opinion" or "fact" as the article explained. If women were more confident then maybe they would edit Wikipedia more often, but that's just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI think this is very interesting and it brings up many problems and differences in gender in our society. I think that you bring up a good point about women being too busy. I do think that some men can be equally as busy, but I think that being busy and having many things running through your mind, the last thing you want to do is state your opinion or facts on the internet. I think that many women don't really have an interest in wanting to go onto an internet encyclopedia and write about facts and stuff. I think a lot of the women that I know would say that they don't have time for that or that they don't really care about doing stuff like that because it doesn't seem very important to do. I think that this is the way some women think, but this brings up a point about only knowing and learning facts that are provided by men. This reinforces the male dominance of our society and the idea that men know more or should be the ones that are right and are important for providing public information. I think women have to step up, but it could be a hard task to get many women to state their opinions and write facts on a public encyclopedia.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comments, folks...and as we discussed men and women are likely to be busy...but how about thinking about this "business" from a gendered perspective. What are they busy with? Presumably, as men are editing Wikipedia pages, they are "busy." So why don't more women feel as if that's a space and what they do in that space would be equally busy and important?
ReplyDeleteSome of you raise comments that because Wikipedia is not usually officially sanctioned by academia, it is less worthy of attention, but given it's reach and public nature, shouldn't women have more say in what is written there? Academics disagree with a great deal of public information, but I'm not sure I want to set them academics as the yardstick by which to measure ALL public information... especially given biases in academia!