A recent article in the New York Times revealed that women make up less than 15% of active contributors to Wikipedia. This has sparked a debate about why women are so underrepresented. Claims that it has something to do with the technology being more congenial to men do not stand up, because the 85/15 split is pretty typical of traditional media too. And don’t even get me started on the ‘brain sex’ argument that men are bound to dominate the world of amateur on-line encyclopedia-writing because they’re basically a bunch of autistics, hard-wired to collect facts and obsess about trivia.
But these explanations have not been the most popular ones. Many contributors to the debate, including some ‘experts’ commissioned by the Times, have suggested that women are deterred from participating in the Wikipedia project by their (unwarranted) feeling of inferiority. Unlike men, most women do not feel entitled to set themselves up as experts, or if they do take that role upon themselves, they lack the confidence to defend their views against contributors who have other ideas.
I am always suspicious of any argument which boils down to ‘women are their own worst enemies’, because in truth, they very rarely are. In this case, for instance, I would say that in general it is men rather than women who think that women are inferior. An extraordinary number of men seem to be genuinely convinced, often without even being consciously aware of it, that they must know better than any woman they find themselves in an argument with. This is not some innate characteristic, it’s an effect of the way they’ve been socialized. But to me it is undoubtedly a reason to steer clear of an enterprise like Wikipedia, which is set up on the assumption that there will be arguments among contributors—and whoever wins the argument gets to delete the loser’s contribution. No woman with any self-esteem wants to spend time and energy writing something if she thinks there’s a good chance that some dickhead who just assumes he knows better will come along and erase it.
Does it matter if Wikipedia is an overwhelmingly male creation? Since the Times article that question has been getting a lot of play on feminist discussion lists, and the consensus seems to be that it does matter. Everyone, it is argued, uses Wikipedia all the time: if the vast bulk of its content reflects only men’s knowledge, men’s interests and men’s perspectives, then the millions who regularly go to it for information are getting a seriously skewed picture of the world.
But some of those who make this criticism have a peculiar idea of what the world would look like if women’s perspectives on it were better represented. One example of gender-bias given by the Times was the dearth of material on Sex and the City by comparison with The Sopranos. Another was the lack of an entry for—I’ve forgotten the exact details, but I think it might have been friendship bracelets. (Writing the last sentence, I had to pause for a moment to retrieve from the recesses of my brain what friendship bracelets actually are; on the question of why anyone should care enough to look them up in an encyclopedia, my brain returned ‘page not found’.) If these really are the kinds of subjects women are interested in writing or reading about, then we probably shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a computer. Not that they are any more trivial than the stuff a lot of male contributors write about, but equal airtime for girly trivia is one feminist cause I feel no great need to champion.
If we really want an on-line encyclopedia which represents our collective knowledge, I think we should probably leave Wikipedia well alone, and go for the separatist option. Dykipedia, anyone?
I suspect that a part of the explanation of men’s greater participation in Wikipedia is epeen related.
Demonstrating one’s superior knowledge in an area, even (or possibly especially) in a particularly esoteric area, is the geek equivalent of pissing on a tree.
Friendship bracelets come from traditional American Indian crafts (especially, if I remember correctly, Central American indigenous cultures), and have also become a major component of non-indigenous culture for North American girls. So in the context of an article in a USian newspaper, that’s actually not so random an example as it might sound to British ears — friendship bracelets are a staple of many (most?) North American girls’ upbringings, and they have particular cultural significance for many women in the intended readership of the article.
If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s rather Euro-centric to say that this is “trivia” that nobody should care about.
We might also reasonably question why one would expect any single topic to represent all women’s knowledge and interests, however, since it’s impossible to separate out gender and ethnicity.
“If we really want an on-line encyclopedia which represents our collective knowledge”
One might reasonably ask what “collective knowledge” means and who decides what “counts” as something women or feminists should care or know about. Is it the knowledge of White European women (since you’ve already said that indigenous women’s crafts don’t count)?
–IP
Irrational Point makes an entirely rational point: feminists can’t any longer be uncritical of the idea that “women’s collective knowledge” is a straightforward, homogeneous or uncontested category. That’s why earlier radical experiments in subverting the traditional work of reference(I’m thinking of, for instance, Mary Daly and Jane Caputi’s Wickedary, an alternative to the malestream dick-tionary) don’t really stand up to scrutiny now. They’re too dependent on the assumption that women all have the same experiences and attitudes. My separatist “dykipedia” proposal was meant to be a joke. On the friendship bracelets, though, while I take Irrational Point’s point about their significance for particular American indigenous communities, I think it’s fair to say that this wasn’t the reason why they were mentioned in the New York Times article about Wikipedia. Rather they were there to exemplify the (white, male) journalist’s idea of “girls’ stuff”, and I do think that is trivialising.
“On the friendship bracelets, though, while I take Irrational Point’s point about their significance for particular American indigenous communities, I think it’s fair to say that this wasn’t the reason why they were mentioned in the New York Times article about Wikipedia. Rather they were there to exemplify the (white, male) journalist’s idea of “girls’ stuff”, and I do think that is trivialising”
If you the whole of my first comment, I also noted that friendship bracelets were a staple in the upbringing of many, if not most, non-indigenous North American girls. And actually I suspect *that* is the reason they were mentioned in the article. I imagine the readership of the New York Times is predominantly North American, and this would be in their respective knowledge bases, so it’s not all that weird in context.
Which is not to say that the NYTimes couldn’t have picked a different example. On the other hand, the examples picked for men are also curious (and also exemplary of someone’s view of North American “boy stuff”). Baseball cards? That’s the “gold standard” of gender justice the NYTimes thinks we should be aiming for? *That* was the bit I thought was off.
–IP
Well, colour me shocked. Women made unwelcome in the male dominated geek IT world? Surely not. For women like me who love geekery but are less keen on the rather blokey atmosphere that often goes with it, try the Geek Feminism Wiki. (1st hit on google if you search for it).