Librarians, Wikipedia and the Gender Divide

Although this topic was popular a few months back, it still holds true that only a fraction of women contribute by editing pages on Wikipedia.org, the world’s largest and most used encyclopedia.

Freakonomics Radio, The Daily Dot, Mashable, and various blogs explored why the gender divide remains within this virtual community. There have been several suggestions as to why the gender gap exists, despite Wikipedia users being evenly split between men and women. Some proposed the editing process of Wikipedia is too abrasive and non collaborative. Others suggest it is due to the male bias in the technology field. Some offered that women were simply not interested in being editors.

Despite the actual reason(s) why this is true, I find it problematic that one of the world’s most used websites is staunchly dominated by one type of person.

Infographic taken from
Mashable.com

And the issue of Wikipedia’s gender divide has come to up once again in the internet community. Accusations of institutional sexism have arisen due to edits made on the American Novelists’ page. The page, over time, has been edited to reflect a division of gender; consequently, there are now two lists for American Novelists. The original list, and one list for women novelists, which is listed as the original’s subcategory.

I’m not sure why Wikipedia editors feel the need to separate the two. Despite the intent of these editors, women, in this context, have been labeled as “other”.

Would this have happened if the editors were equal in terms of gender? Would this have even been an issue if more than 9% of women were editors? No one can say for sure.

So how do we alleviate the gender gap and improve Wikipedia in terms of content and representation? Librarians. Especially those who aspire to be library & information school professionals.

It is no secret our profession is dominated by women (more specifically white women). While this is problematic in of itself, I think this fact, in this instance, can improve Wikipedia’s issue of an editorial gender gap.

While attaining my MS(LIS)/MSIS, I worked on various portions of the ipl2 as part of the school curriculum. Across a variety of library and information system classes, I acted as a reference librarian, evaluated both its content and its adherence to human computer interaction standards, cleaned up its metadata, etc. And while I think the ipl2 may be of use for some folks as an information repository, I am unsure of the site’s longevity and purpose, aside from being the guinea pig of Drexel’s iSchool students.

I propose that Drexel as well as other library schools make it part of their curriculum for students to contribute to Wikipedia, both as editors and writers. Perhaps professors can follow the lead of Chanita Bishop, and become Wikipedia Ambassadors.

The obvious benefit to adding this type of assignment is that it helps students improve their research skills. Another benefit is acquired confidence with participating and contributing within internet communities. Most importantly, it will help improve the gender divide amongst Wikipedia editors.