Is There a Female Gender Bias in Wikipedia?

[cinergy]

Men create information, women babies. What's the problem?

 

[RipperjackAU]

[citation][nom]Gamer-girl[/nom]If any girl shows interest in a male orientated subject she will have to deal with the stereotype of females not being able to contribute anything worth while to the subject.[/citation]

That, or everybody will think she is a lesbian.

 

[blackened144]

[citation][nom]Gamer-girl[/nom]It could be that the majority of females do not classify editing Wikipedia as fun or enjoyable - that would be the simplest explanation.[/citation]

Didnt the president of Harvard get fired a few years ago because that was the explanation he gave for why their weren't as many women in the sciences as men?

 

[burnley14]

“We expected to find that females would avoid conflict, but to our surprise we found just the opposite,” John Riedl, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a member of the research team, said.

Yeeeaaah. Have you ever actually spoken to a woman, Mr. Riedl? Avoidance of conflict isn't really one of their signature traits.

 

[zak_mckraken]

In breaking news, a recent study shows that beer commercials have a slight male gender bias.

I'm pretty confident in saying that contribution comes with interest.

 

[maestintaolius]

TIL: Wikipedia editors have gender.

 

[Silmarunya]

Is it me or is the internet getting more sexist by the minute. Name one good reason why women belong in the kitchen or make poor writers.

Some facts to chew on: most high school and university teachers are female. More women than men complete higher studies. Female only teams perform better than male only teams (although mixed ones do better than both).

Kitchen & sandwich jokes are fun, but even they get old. Quit believing women are below you. Try it, it makes life so much better... And before anyone asks, I'm male.

 

[n00bxqb]

If these women write wiki articles anything like how my local paper writes news articles (all female writers and editors except the sports guy), I can see why. It's a joke. The basic principles of news reporting are nowhere to be found (who, what, when, where, why, how) and lots of "news stories" are simply opinion pieces which are generally poorly researched. Also, the proofreading is clearly sub-par, with all sorts of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and improper use of punctuation.

The worst one was the "story" they did on the new bio-diesel facility in town and it turned into an opinion piece on how corn shouldn't be used for fuel, it should be used to feed the hungry and poor. Also, using corn to fuel are vehicles will take away more land from wildlife, contribute to global warming, etc. Where is this facility located in town ? Don't know. When is it going to be operational ? Don't know. What are prices going to be like ? Don't know.

After reading the OTHER local newspaper (the one that let a man write the story), it turns out the bio-diesel facility isn't even using freshly-grown organic material, they're using waste cooking oil from local restaurants.

 

[n00bxqb]

Bah, I used "are" instead of "our." I haven't had my coffee yet ...

 

[gokanis]

Wikipedia in general is biased, just as is everything else we read or even write ourselves is biased. We can't help it because we are only human and everything we wirte is affected by bias and everything we read, hear and see is filtered through that bias. Since most of the material is written by men then yes it is a mans viewpoint and therefore biased towareds men. It gets really off kilter when something like wikipedia is dominated by one sex or even one viewpoint. Data is ignored, censored, deleted to suit the needs of the majority. Look at the different newspapers and TV channels out there catering towards one demographic. The most difficult thing to do is to write objectively and state only facts, there is almost nobody that can do it anymore. Imagine what would happen if ducks could write, then we would really be crying foul/fowl.....

 

[jecastej]

Interesting, I never thought about it, but expected facts about wikipedia.

How many times did you get engaged in a long conversation about sciene-fiction, the universe, high-end hardware or car mechanics themes with a woman? Got a new friend, dated, married that one?

Here at Tom's, How many of you reading this conversation are women?
And I would personally LOVE to hear or read there's a lot, please!!! But even this conversation is mostly man, manly man and many nerds. Kidding! me included.

Also I've been insulted many times here at Tom's by readers and I never for one split second thought just ONE of those insults came from a woman. Nope, you won't get a date here...

 

[Zingam]

I have never seen my mother, sister or grandma to use Wikipedia and they are not children!
I bet they do not know what it is.

99% of the women are not interested in science or nerd stuff. They have different interests in life.

 

[billiardicus]

Any field that places an emphasis on science and facts will be dominated by men. As a whole, men are simply more interested in these things. As a whole, women are less interested in them. What people are interested in, they also become more proficient in.

I don't trust a female mechanic not because I think she's not smart enough to learn about cars, but because I know the average female is not interested in learning about cars, while the average male wants to know how a car works at age 3 and can already perfectly mimic engine noises. This gives men a tremendous advantage when it comes to understandings cars.

I don't trust a male baby sitter not because men are too stupid to take care of children, but because the average man simply does not care as much about children as women do.

Men are women are different.

 

[NuclearShadow]

Men tend to think with logic and rationality concerning most issues (with the exception of violence or sex) averagely more than women. While women tend to be more emotional about every subject and those emotions get in the way or in some cases even know they are wrong and still do the action.

I'm not trying to be sexist but from my years and experience with women I know this to be true.
There are exceptions to every case and some women are not like above but most are.

 

[eyemaster]

Women are more about feelings, men are more about facts. Of course, men feel strongly about the facts, but women are more about the feelings and less about the facts.

Wikipedia is related to facts, not feelings.

 

[Silmarunya]

[citation][nom]eyemaster[/nom]Women are more about feelings, men are more about facts. Of course, men feel strongly about the facts, but women are more about the feelings and less about the facts.Wikipedia is related to facts, not feelings.[/citation]

Cliché and a false one at that. Just read some psychology reports. Men aren't any more rational than women, they just have different feelings - competiveness and agression versus emotional responses and bonding for example.

For example, female journalists tend to be more neutral in political writing but less neutral when reporting about crime victims. So more emotional? At first sight, yes. But look deeper and the difference fades quickly.

 

[godnodog]

Rename it WikiGossip, that should do the trick

 

[weaselsmasher]

If women refuse to participate, or respond differently to actions that all editors are required to deal with, that's not the fault of men.

You want representation? Then represent. Nobody's going to do it for you, and nobody's going to have a man-woman quota.

 

[Silmarunya]

[citation][nom]weaselsmasher[/nom]If women refuse to participate, or respond differently to actions that all editors are required to deal with, that's not the fault of men.You want representation? Then represent. Nobody's going to do it for you, and nobody's going to have a man-woman quota.[/citation]

The problem is not so much that women don't contribute - nobody gives a damn about the gender of the editors, most of them are anonymous anyway.

The real issue is that Wikipedia now seems to be giving too little attention to subjects that some might think 'feminine'. For a platform that aims to offer comprehensive information about every topic known to mankind, that's a problem.

And second, female editors are blocked more frequently because they present controversial statements. Just like in real life, the opinion of minorities is being filtered out by the mainstream. That's a problem, because you need multiple views on the same topic to get a decent overview of it.

 

[aaron88_7]

Women do contribute to Wikipedia, but halfway through their writing they get distracted and start watching TV and never finish it.