With over 60 million daily readers, Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. Every day, hundreds of articles are written and published on the site. But only 10–15 percent of these are written by women. The website itself says so in the article on gender differences on Wikipedia. Elisabeth Carrera, managing director of Wikimedia Norway, believes that the skewed distribution is far too bad. – We cannot live with one of the most important sources of free and open information being so male-dominated. She says the low representation of women means that half of the population is not represented well enough. – Everyone has a point of view when they acquire and share knowledge. Therefore, you need all voices to get a correct picture of the world. Tough environment for women One of the reasons why women avoid contributing to Wikipedia is what Carrera describes as a tough debate environment. For the articles that are created, they are written in collaboration with several others. And along the way there is often dialogue between several writers. – The dialogue between the various contributors can be a little too harsh in tone. Who, what and when an article on Wikipedia has been edited is open to everyone in the revision history of each article. Photo: Screenshot Wikipedia / A constructive and professional discussion can slip into personal attacks. And Carrera says the women have it the hardest. – We know that some women have experienced that they get a more constructive academic discussion when they do not identify as women. – Neutral or male alias makes the discussion better. I think that is very sad. Difficult to keep hold of women Sigrun Espe has been a contributor to Wikipedia for 12 years. She says that it can be difficult to retain new writers. – When you are brand new and face criticism, it can be easy to think that “this is not for me”, she says. Sigrund Espe contributes the most to Nynorsk Wikipedia. Photo: Wikimedia Norge – Because there is often feedback that things need to be changed, but it’s really just because everyone wants to do it as well as possible, says Espe. She believes many women are a little extra concerned that what they write should be good. – And when they receive criticism, it may be that they withdraw faster than men. It is easy to think that it may not play a big role whether it is a man or a woman who writes an article about rocks or chemical compounds. But the skewed gender distribution may have something to say about what is being written about, Carrera believes. – Different starting points lead to perhaps choosing a different theme. Water power before the printing press Editor-in-chief of Store norske lexikon, Erik Bolstad, has previously been active on Wikipedia. He shares Carrera’s observations. Erik Bolstad is editor-in-chief of Store norske lexikon. Photo: Arild Sandsvik / news – We see that there is a lot that can be influenced by gender. Traditionally, we have cared about very technical things, while cultural history has been a lower priority. He uses an article about Volda as an example. – In the article about Volda, it says more about power production than that one of Norway’s first printing plants was located in the municipality. – There is not necessarily a gender balance, but it is easy to imagine that it could be influenced by gender. Osdalen power plant is located in Volda and is mentioned in the SNL article about the municipality. Photo: Øyvind Berge Sæbjørnsen / news Medal for female recruitment Large Norwegian lexicon also has a lower proportion of women than men, and Bolstad says that they are working to increase female recruitment. – I hand out gold medals when women outside Oslo are recruited, silver medals for men outside Oslo and tin medals for men in Oslo. But work is being done to increase the proportion of articles dealing with cultural history, which has traditionally been dominated by women. – Last year we took over the entire Norwegian bunads encyclopedia. That substance was, so to speak, absent with us. Wikipedia struggles with recruiting female writers. Photo: Malin Nygård Solberg / news Has written 1,750 articles about female researchers One person who has addressed the lack of female biographies on Wikipedia is British Jessica Wade. On a daily basis, she is an award-winning physicist at Imperial College London, but she says to news that much of her free time is spent writing biographies of female scientists. – When I found out that Wikipedia had such an under-representation, I became concerned with trying to change that. So I spend as much time as I can outside the lab contributing to the site. Physicist Jessica Wade has written over 1,750 articles about women and minority scientists from around the world. Photo: Dave Guttridge / The Photographic She started at the beginning of 2018 and spends an average of 1-2 hours a day writing Wikipedia biographies. This has resulted in over 1,750 articles about female and minority researchers. She believes that it should not matter which gender writes the articles, but points out that it can still influence who and what is written about. – From an overall perspective, it should not matter who contributes to Wikipedia. We should all write about everything and everyone that is important and worth mentioning.
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Uses male names to avoid personal attacks – news Nordland
