 The work surrounding gender gap and research is that I do a study on the participation of women and the barriers they face and their motivations to contribute on Wikipedia. We'll talk about that later. And my co-presenter for this session is Reem Al-Kashif. Reem has an MA in linguistics and her master's thesis was on the content gap in Arabic Wikipedia. Before I go into the slides I have a few disclaimers to make and a few knowledge gaps to acknowledge. In order to prepare this presentation we looked at 52 research papers which about gender gap and Wikipedia and their intersections. So when we had a look we found that when we talk about Wikimedia as a whole it's usually Wikipedia that comes into the research space. So we have absolutely zero knowledge about what happens in other Wikipedia sister projects like Wikisource for example. We do not have any research on the gender gap on Wikisource for example or Wikicode. So that's a knowledge gap we want to acknowledge. And secondly most of these studies have been conducted either in Europe or in the US and there have been fewer researchers coming from other parts of the world. So the participants of the study are more likely to be people from those geographical regions. Again when we talk about the gender gap here all the researches we have read is about women and not about queer people. So we have absolutely no knowledge about how queer people edit Wikipedia and their experiences in editing Wikipedia. So we have a big knowledge gap out there as well which we need to like fix in the coming years. So that said I will go to the slides. For the basic question which people ask you when you do an outreach event for women is that oh what proportion of women are women? What proportion of the editors on Wikipedia are women? And there are different numbers for that. So I put them up together in one slide showing different user surveys and you know the percentage of the female participation in all those surveys. And you can see that the numbers range from 9% female to 22% female depending upon which study you want to choose to use. And all these studies have been conducted by the WMF and we don't have like many other people who have been looking into this area. And also these have been surveys and not the method chosen for you know to find the female participation has been user surveys and not anything else. So we know that women are less likely to participate in surveys compared to men. So these numbers may be skewed in that way as well. And you also see that the latest of those surveys happened in 2014 and we are now in 2018. So a lot of differences may have happened during that time frame. So keeping all these in mind you can say that okay 9 to 22% of Wikipedia editors are female. Of course there is also a bigger knowledge gap like we acknowledged here. Now in this presentation I will be dealing with the participation gap and my co-presenter will talk about the content gap. So one of the reasons why women are said to participate less on Wikipedia is because of difference in self-confidence. It could be that women are socialized to be less self-confident or it could be that their experiences make them less confident, less self-confident and we do not know about that. But we kind of know that women are less self-confident to edit Wikipedia and that could be internal reasons within Wikipedia or external reasons. We do not know about that also. But it says that beliefs about one's competence explain a large share of gender gap on Wikipedia editing. And female Wikipedia users have a lower confidence in their expertise and a lower confidence in their value of contribution. So there is something going on in terms of how people perceive themselves as self-confident and the gender gap. Our women said it's reverted more. We know that as newcomers, female newcomers are reverted more than males. And but when they are reverted, being reverted as newcomers has the same apparent effect on males and females. So women are reverted more, but the effect which they have after being reverted is the same for men and women. So it could be that the reason why we have fewer women becoming established editors could be because that there are fewer women coming in at the first place. And it could be that a lot of women, a lot more women are reverted and they just choose to quit Wikipedia abruptly, right? And Wikipedia has been known to have a fighting culture. And how does this affect women? Female contributors prefer to share and collaborate rather than to delete and change. And their behaviors on Wikipedia may be derived by personal motivations, such as enjoyment and learning. And articles with high female editor concentrations are more controversial. And this is something counterintuitive and I've been thinking about. And female Wikipedia users perceive high levels of conflict. And women also report more discomfort in editing others' work, which typically involves conflict. And also they are more sensitive to getting negative responses to critical feedback. So this is all we know about Wikipedia's fighting culture and how it affects women. Now this slide is from my own study, which I interviewed Indian women contributors and asked them about the barriers they face and their motivations to contribute. So these are some of the themes that emerged from my study. And a lot of women said that they have too little leisure time and that is the reason why they cannot contribute so much. And there is, well, there is conflicting evidence for this. Some studies say that having too little leisure time doesn't affect the capacity to edit Wikipedia. And some studies say that women have too little leisure time and that's the possible reason why women do not edit. So we have both sides and we do not know yet. We do not have strong evidence to say that one of the factors that leads to women's less contribution is the lack of discretionary time. And since there are fewer women leaders, they have fewer role models which women can relate themselves to. So because there are too few women editors, fewer women become leaders. And the newcomer woman cannot identify any woman leaders. So she's less likely to contribute than she apparently quits. And the perception that Wikipedia is a male space, it dampens their motivation to edit. So when you think that it's a bunch of men hanging around and writing articles, women are less likely to get into that space and make a mark there. And an important thing which is especially true in developing countries is that women do not possess devices to connect to the internet. And therefore they have poorer internet skills. And sometimes the internet use is limited to a shared device. So this device is shared between all members of the family. And this use of this shared device is dictated by an elderly male member of the household. So the device will be kept in a public space, perhaps in the living room of the house. And then the use of internet is constantly monitored. So women feel less secure to go to websites and explore on their own. And women also did not get support from the community when male editors harassed and threatened them. And during my interviews, it becomes more and more evident that it's not the harassment itself that makes women to feel bad about Wikipedia. But the reaction of the community after the harassment has taken place. When the harasser would have been a very influential man in the community. People, I mean, other editors, they do not care about the harassment. They see as if it did not happen. Or they sometimes ask them to report to an authority and they do nothing else. So because of lack of support after they have been harassed, it's the most important thing that makes them feel bad about Wikipedia than the harassment itself. Of course the harassment does influence their, make them feel bad. But not getting adequate support after the harassment also is an important factor for women to not keep contributing. So after having read all these researchers, I have just five points to make for you to remember. These are my takeaways. Boost women's confidence and give them invitations to participate. We know that they have had less self-confidence than men to edit Wikipedia. So you have to invite them to be able to participate on Wikipedia. It's not enough that you just open up a space and ask just people to come. You have to find and pick your women participants and invite them to be able to make them feel confident to participate. Secondly, think before you revert or change something, especially if the editor is a newcomer. Newcomers are more likely to make mistakes. But before you revert them, you just think whether it's how that would affect the person's editing behavior in the future. So it would be a good idea to revert that change or make an edit over that change and then go back to the talk page of the person who has made that edit and say why that edit has been reverted and so forth. So it will be good for their further Wikipedia contributions and support women who report harassment. It's not enough that you just ask them to report harassment but also support them emotionally and all as a community. And if they feel that the harassment has been a collage in the community, they are more likely to be in the community for a long time. Make opportunities for women to socialize with other women leaders. Most communities have fewer women leaders than men and if there are women leaders make opportunities for newcomer women to connect with more experienced women so that they can learn from each other and make shorter and easier contributions possible on Wikipedia. This is something like a lot of women said that they have too little discretionary time, so they do not have enough time to sit down for two hours and write a full article. So it would be and some women do not possess devices to do that in the absence of a male supervisor. So what they could do is that when they are going on the train or when they are sitting on the bus on the way to the school or something, if they could make a shorter contribution like changing a dramatic error or like adding a category or something like that. These contributions should be made more easier to do and then they can do it on the way or they don't have to spend a lot of discretionary time to be able to do that kind of contribution. So this is something we have to incorporate in the design of Wikipedia so that more women come and do the edits. And finally, all these, I mean the research papers we have read are in English language and most of these researchers have happened in English and very few in French and Spanish and German. And we have zero knowledge about what happens in African languages or Asian languages, for example. So we cannot generalize these findings into a small language Wikipedia in India, for example. So we have to be, these only have limited value in saying that they mostly are from the English Wikipedia. And now I give the mic to my co-presenter where she will be talking about the content gap on Wikipedia. Thank you very much, Nitha. I am a huge friend of Nitha and please stop by and talk to her about her research. It's amazing. So another question that research has been trying to answer is, do we have enough articles about women? Well, there have been a lot of research about this. And we, well, mainly there are many missing articles compared to the Instaclopedia Britannica. And it is sometimes harder for women to get articles and this has to do with notability criteria and so on. Notability criteria on some versions or some editions of Wikipedia are harsher and they kind of make sure that women do not get as easy as men. So even this study also suggested that maybe relaxing the notability criteria for women would be something that we might want to consider. But the good news is the situation has been getting considerably better. Better in the sense that there are more articles that are longer, have better coverage, even the existing articles about women. There is no bias in which article gets to be featured on the homepage of Wikipedia. So this is good. Things are getting better. This might be perhaps due to the fact that Wikipedia is reflecting some change in the world because it has been found that Wikipedia actually does mirror what is happening in society. So since we do have some initiatives and things were getting considerably better, well, not considerably, but better, maybe Wikipedia is mirroring this. And also there have been so many initiatives inside the movement itself. Competitions here and there, and editor sounds, and talks, and everything. So this might also have to do with this. So let's keep this up. Another question was that do articles about women look different in every way? Well, there have been research about internal links, and it has been found that internal links frequently lead to articles about men. If you look at it from a different perspective, if men are related to women, if they are linked to women through interlinks, they are not. Usually women are related to men, not the other way around. Also, if you look at info boxes, and that was very interesting, if you look at info boxes, usually for articles about men, about women, you would find this powers attribute, but while you will not find this more frequently or as frequently in articles about men. Also, articles are edited a lot by women are not long enough. So, well, these articles that are edited a lot by women has been considered for some studies as a way to measure which articles are more important for women or women like to read more about, and apparently they are not long enough. Although we are trying to make them long, they are not. Also, another important question was that, what about the content and the language of the articles about women? And this is my area of study, actually. So, it has been found a lot that relationship and family issues are discussed way more in articles about women than articles about men. And this may have to do with society and how women are always kind of related to the home domain and relationship domain and so on. And then, the second thing, which is actually what I'm also doing, is words that convey subtle bias in the articles about women as well. And this has been proved true for the English Wikipedia. So, the takeaways. First of all, please revise and add articles about women, especially historic figure in the 1940s and 1950s. Because those articles do not only suffer from the previously mentioned issues, but they also suffer from the historic bias because the sources we use to add to those articles are also biased. So, it needs a little bit of work and digging deep in history and resources to get the facts and adding them to the articles themselves. Also, please extend the articles that are heavily edited by women, which means that we have to identify first, what are the articles that are heavily edited by women, and then we have to increase our contributions to these articles. Another thing we could do is double-checking our ability criteria. We do not have to give women a hard time when they are trying to get an article on Wikipedia. And through the conference, I have been talking to several people, and it turned out that even without research, this is something that is real. Women in African context, especially, are not always notable or as notable as men, although they are very notable in their communities. So, we might need to check this, each of us in his different or specific community, language community, that is. Also, please be careful with internal links. Try to revise them and see which articles are rightfully linked to the articles about women, and if the men article are not linked to the women article. Let's just make it equal. Another thing we could do is to add an equal amount of details about all topics and articles about women. We do not really need only to focus about relationship and family matters, and if we are going to do this, well, we better do this as well for the articles about men. But in all cases, let's just make it something that is relevant to the person we're talking about. Also, one more thing we can talk about, and this has to do with language, the neutral point of view policy. I mean, there have been various modifications to the policy over the years, but it could use more work, because it needs more specificity when it comes to what to do, what to write, what not to write, and so on. And of course, we can use all the research that has been done on language, and to take some hints from it and add it to the policy. Let's also, this is something that is very intuitive, avoid using words that introduce bias, and let's use verbs in describing the actions of women. So rather than saying so-and-so, was stubborn, so-and-so being a female, was stubborn in a certain situation, you could just say that she refused to do something in that certain situation, which makes a huge difference. You're describing what happened in that situation, not how she is all the time. Yeah, and also, do more research on language editions. As Nessa was saying, mainly all the research that has been done on gender gap, it mainly was in English, not too much on many other languages, and certainly other languages like Arabic and Indian and so on, they're just not on the map. Finally, do make sure that you include info boxes that you just do not include the attributes in the info boxes just because the person you're writing about is a woman, so you need to mention the spouse. If you just ask yourself, if I was writing about a man, would mentioning the spouse be important here or not? Also, please do, it is not really obvious, I mean, not really clear here, but this is a page on Wikipedia. It is called Writing About Women. It is very, very good. It has been written recently by many people, and it is very good. It is a valuable resource that you can go to and before an edit-a-thon you are having about women and so on, you can read that, you can get some tips, and you can share it with your people. So yeah, this is the time for questions. Any questions? I'm sorry, I can't really see because the light is blinding here. Hi, thank you for this. So I'm Erin Hafhaker. I'm a researcher at the Wikimedia Foundation. And some of my studies have suggested that edit-a-thons that target articles about women or target women's interest articles have been super effective in this area. I didn't see that in the takeaways that you listed, and so I was wondering what your opinions were of these targeted edit-a-thons and if you've seen the effects of that. Well, the researches which we have read, they were peer-reviewed research papers published in journals. So we haven't read anything about targeted edit-a-thons and how they help women. So I cannot make a statement on that. But from my personal experience as an outreach person, I see that when we conduct events specifically for women, they are more likely to stick on. And when they are in a mixed group, it's difficult for them to ask questions. And sometimes they feel that when a male person is asking a question, they cannot, I mean, they are not invited being there. So targeted edit-a-thons have been, I mean, they have done good things in my experience. But I cannot generalize it, of course. Gotcha. Just to clarify, this is peer-reviewed research that appeared in a journal. So we'll just sync up afterwards. Self-promotion. Thank you. Thank you. Just a quick question about the reform and policy. Can you please repeat the part, because I was slightly distracted by some communications. I want to be, that part really clear. This is, sorry, the reform and policy, because this is actually a very interesting point in the Italian community. So I really would like to get to know better. Thank you very much. As I can see that the neutral point of view policy as it is right now, it has gotten to a point that it has details about what to do and what to write specifically. What to write and how to write about people, people in general. And also there is a section about women as well. But as I see it right now, it is helpful, but not that helpful, because there are still things that have been found in research that are not included in this policy. So my suggestion was that we should go over the research that has been done already and try to incorporate some of the results from that research into the policy in order to update it. And also, this is just my suggestion now, that we can also do some sort of maybe a survey or something to understand also what might introduce bias to people. So that could be complementary to the research itself. So that's basically the whole idea. Fantastic. Thank you. So just before we are done, I just want to show you something that might be of interest to some of you. Women's tech store. I think we do have Denise and Michelle. So yeah, this is an event that is happening on October 26 and 27 in the Netherlands. You can visit this link for more information. It is absolutely fantastic. It is basically a tech event for beginners and also experienced developers, specifically women, to share the knowledge with each other. If somebody knows better, she could teach the other person and so on. They work collaboratively on technical projects for MediaRiki and for Wikipedia all in all. So that's pretty interesting. Please make sure to talk to Denise or go to the link. Also, Nessa and I would like to invite you to the lunch, that would be at 12.30 in the restaurant, in the breakfast room where you had breakfast. Thank you very much. I had a question for you. Have you considered something that's worked well in the Me Too movement is public shame of particularly egregious malefactors. Have you considered that there's obviously systemic forms of harassment and then there are just really terrible examples of whether that could actually have an impact on explaining this behavior is unacceptable. I don't know really, but most of the talk, I mean most of the interactions between Wikimedians happen on a public space. So they happen on talk pages, they happen on village pumps. So I think among the, I mean if harassment occurs, there is always evidence, there is usually evidence for that unless the harassment is outside the Wikimedia platform. For example, some women report harassment on social media. For example, that we do not know, but most of the time the harassment happens on Wikipages, which is kind of live and real and everybody sees it. So that itself is a form of public shaming, which might be impacting people's behavior, but we do not have adequate research for that. Thank you.