On viewing a photo from the Wikipedia meetup in London last Friday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:WikiMeet_London_2004-12-03_23.09.jpg
...it struck me how skewed the gender ratio was -- 3 women and about 22
men at that meeting. I looked around for some statistics or discussion
to explain or at least confirm this phenomenon, but I all I found was
blogger Joi Ito remarking that after meeting a few people from the top
of the power structure, Wikipedia seemed to be remarkably gender-balanced.
That, I think, is a statistical anomaly, or perhaps an odd fact of
gender relations -- after all, those women were singled out and elected.
I pondered doing a proper survey, contacting people by email, but the I
realised that there was a less precise but far easier way to get this
information.
The "Viva Wikipedia" community on
orkut.com contains 774 wikipedians,
wannabe wikipedians, and people interested in Wikipedia. Unlike on
Wikipedia, orkut members generally give their gender and relationship
status. I downloaded all 52 pages of the member listing and counted the
relevant keywords, which were conveniently given on the member listing
itself. 10 minutes later I had the following results:
"Viva Wikipedia" community membership statistics
Total: 774
Number Ratio
Male 665 85.9%
Female 105 13.6%
Unspecified 4 0.5%
Single 353 45.6%
Married 101 13.0%
Committed 158 20.4%
Open marriage 6 0.8%
Open relationship 11 1.4%
Unspecified 145 18.7%
It would have been nice to have some age and education statistics, but
that information wasn't given on the member listing. The relationship
statistics are roughly in line with Orkut's background demographics. The
background gender statistics on Orkut are:
Male: 1,433,169 48.1%
Female: 1,543,413 51.9%
These were determined using the search feature. The overall proportion
of female web surfers ranges from about 40% to 50% depending on country,
see
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P1554
The 13.6% figure agrees neatly with the 3:22 ratio observed in London.
Why is Wikipedia so repellant to women? I couldn't begin to speculate.
Any ideas?
-- Tim Starling
