Discussions about the gender gap in science and technology fields have become as contagious as cholera in the real world and just as widespread in the ¨online¨ world. Recently, the New York Times reported about the scarcity of women contributors in the Wikipedia forums, triggering heated arguments not only from the readers but also from many experts in all walks of life.
Wikipedia, the ninth most visited website on the Internet, is a free encyclopedia hailed as a collaborative, genderless, and egalitarian space where no expertise is required to edit any of the articles. A Pew Survey indicates that 53% of internet users use Wikipedia as an objective resource source (1). Yet, a study conducted by the Wikipedia Foundation indicates that barely 15% of all Wikipedia’s contributors are females (2). This is worrisome because it means that Wikipedia’s vast wealth of information, believed to be the contributions of all citizens, is in fact testosterone-laden. In other words, Wikipedia might appear to represent all values like freedom and openness, but the striking gender disparity is merely a replication of the division that we find in real life and the depth to which the patriarchal system intrude upon our lives.
Heather Mac Donald, a contributing editor to City Journal, firmly rebuts the notion that Wikipedia is sexist, urging feminists to ¨stop hyperventilating¨. According to her, women have always been unsatisfied with their participation in the media and have persistently blamed men for being the ¨gatekeepers of literary culture¨ (3). Less than a decade ago, for instance, the political commentator and feminist advocate Susan Estrich launched a raging campaign against Los Angeles Times for alleged discrimination against female writers. Estrich concluded that the exaggerated number of male compared to female contributors on op-ed pages, influential newspapers and published journals was not ¨the result of merit alone¨, but a symptom of female exclusion (4). Mac Donald explains that this logic is false when used against Wikipedia, because there are no ¨gatekeepers¨ that can inhibit the participation of a woman. As a matter of fact she says, ¨anyone can write or edit an entry, either anonymously or under his or her name¨ (5). According to Mac Donald then, women are not contributing simply because they do not want to and not because Wikipedia is sexist. However, to believe that personal preference or choice is the determinant factor behind this phenomenon is obviously an overly simplistic remark. Clearly, there has to be more convincing explanations that can detail the source of drastic gender imbalance in Wikipedia, especially since the website enjoys a fairly equal ratio of 52% male to 48% female visitors (6).
A closer look at Wikipedia pages suggest that, among many other reasons, women are probably less inclined to participate on a sphere that does not mirror their social or real life. Susan C. Herring, a professor of information science and linguistics at Indiana University, discovered through an online survey that more women, compared to men, had a negative impression of discussion forums (7). According to Herring, some women felt intimidated by the hostile and contentious environment of editing forums because the process of constructing knowledge required constant debating and defending of one’s point of view against strangers that would delete or even insult their contributions. More importantly, Herring explains that men and women have different communication styles in which ¨men tend to assert their opinions as facts, whereas women tend to phrase their informative messages as suggestions, offers, and other non-assertive acts¨ (8). Hence, women are less inclined to contribute in discussion forums because the nature of Wikipedia favors a more assertive style. Does this mean that women do not like to argue? Are women unable to take a stand and defend their positions? Obviously, the case is far the opposite. ¨Women know as much as men do, can express themselves as clearly, and have just as much ability to work collaboratively to construct bodies of knowledge¨, says Justine Cassell, a professor and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (9). Unfortunately, women in many places today can still attract a negative crowd by acting as contentiously or defending one’s opinion as vigorously as men sometimes do. Consequently, Cassell concludes that ¨a woman who wishes to share what she knows with others may not want bitter altercation and successive edit wars¨ (10).
To a large extent, these are the ripple effects of the patriarchal system that Allan Johnson describes in his essay Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us. Patriarchy, according to Johnson, is a social system in which every person is a participant whether or not they realize it, and whether or not they choose to be one. A patriarchal society is based on the dominance and control of men, and promotes characteristics associated with male as the norm. Coincidentally, what we see in Wikipedia is a ¨fact-loving realm¨ that appeals to men because they are ¨fact-obsessive geeks¨ and where women suffer a lack of influence because of their non-assertive communication style (11). With an educated eye, one can realize that Wikipedia resembles a patriarchal system that is male-centered in a very subtle way because it highly favors a masculine style of communication, to the point that it becomes an unearned privilege for men. The most important concept Johnson explores is that patriarchy is neither a problem of the individuals in the system nor an implicit way of saying that men are cruel. This means that to understand the gender gap in Wikipedia, it is not about trying to understand how the individuals and their personalities work within the system, nor is it about playing the blaming game. The key to solving the problem, as Johnson argues, is to understand that patriarchy is a social system in which everyone is a full participant. Thus, to solve the gender gap in Wikipedia, it is absolutely necessary to shift the attention from focusing on the personality traits of men and women to observing critically at the ways in which ¨sexism is embedded in major institutions¨ (12).
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