Image by Feakgok
Wikipedia is improving its brand reputation. Research such as Buzzfeed’s study on Wikipedia versus the Encyclopedia Brittanica showed there was not a huge difference in the number of errors on entries from these two encyclopedias. One thing Wikipedia needs to now focus on improving is the number of women involved in the creation of this online source.
In 2011, the Wikimedia foundation stated that less that ten percent of its contributor base identifies with the female gender. This leaves me asking why there is such a huge gender gap?
In an interview with the New York Times, long time Wikipedia contributor Kat Walsh stated, “The big problem is that the current Wikipedia community is what came about by letting things develop naturally – trying to influence it in another direction is no linger the easiest path, and requires conscious effort to change.”
Now in 2017, we need to be taking conscious effort to fix Wikipedia’s gender gap. I can now say that as a female, I recently created an account with Wikipedia and contributed to a page. I hope that other females will see the lack of women contributing to this global website and will join me in getting those numbers up.
To read more on Wikipedia’s gender gap, check out this article from the Digital Pedagogy Lab.
-Hannah Leigh Johnson
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