While researching gender bender issues on Wikipedia, I came across two articles in NPR and the New York Times that claimed that there was a huge gender gap on Wikipedia. Both supported this claim by citing the Wikimedia Foundation, which found that 87% of the members were male and only 14% of the members were female. However, I think there are some issues with this statistic.
Although I did not come across many avatars names that seemed feminine or avatars that listed their gender on their My Talk page, I still think the statistic is false. In class we studied that many people who join an SNS may or may not display their true offline identity. Therefore, there is a potential for numerous avatars on Wikipedia to choose to reveal themselves as males even though their offline identity is female.
I wonder how Wikimedia came to that conclusion. Do they poll Wikipedia members about their gender, or is there a profile somewhere where members can display their gender? In either case I suspect there may be the possibility for people to lie, but in the case of Wikipedia I can't imagine why many people would identify themselves as a different gender.
ReplyDeleteI suppose women may identify themselves as men if they felt that they would be taken more seriously on the site, but I would hope that women would identify themselves correctly so that more people would recognize the contributions of women.
It's a little disconcerting to think women are purposely presenting their online identities as male. If there's any place that should harbor gender equality I would hope it's the Internet, and especially Wikipedia (which ironically has long articles on gender inequality and sexism!) I suppose a woman might present herself as male to seem more reliable or authoritative, but – if true – that just goes to show how issues of gender roles are still an important and have bled over from the offline world to the webiverse
ReplyDeleteI agree with Goli that we should be concerned that a woman would feel like she has to represent herself as a man just to be taken seriously. Are we back in the 1800's again? I personally don't believe that a woman should have to prove anything in order to be taken seriously, and it would make me really sad if it were truly the case that the women on Wikipedia might be presenting themselves as men just sound more "authoritative."
ReplyDeleteYou know that bit in Half-Blood Prince when Harry and Hermione are arguing over whether or not the Prince was a boy? I wonder if Wikimedia is judging by the way someone "sounds" to decide if they are male or female, if the user don't list a gender. Sounds a bit dubious to me, since the tone of the articles on Wikipedia is meant to be pretty consistent, isn't it? So everyone's writing would sound similar?
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I agree that it's worrying that a woman would feel she has to present herself as a man. Or, I wonder if women are intentionally keeping their gender under wraps as a statement, to make gender a non-issue?