From the past decade it has been noted that lesser than only 13% of the women are contributors of wikipedia worldwide. For the free encyclopedia that is open to edit for any one is mostly run by men. However, there is no potential difference noted of the gender in the readership
The revelations give rise to an abundant debate for what is discouraging the women from being an active contributors to wikipedia though there has not been much progress despite launching several creativities.
The issue can be as much as of the wikipedia as it’s a societal in this age of information. Though its’ the 7th most viewed website in the world and holds on an average of 18 billion views every month, however, the number of editors for the information bearing site is still declining. The future of wikipedia rests upon its ability to employee more editors from the rest of the population
Why a lesser number of women edit wikipedia articles
As per the detailed survey conducted by the professors Julia Bear from the University of Qatar analyzed if the experience of editing articles differ for women and men and if it influences their contributory abilities and a clear difference has been spotted for the women reported they were less confident regarding their expertise and were not comfortable for editing the work of others that often involves conflicts, moreover they are given critical feedback than men. Published in the journal of Sex Roles
The research spanned from 1500 occasional U.S contributors that hold 17.5% females and reported editing less often and showed a desire for being rarely active. However, for the global survey conducted by the Wikimedia foundation from which this subset was extracted comprised of 176000 of accused
A potential amount of research has shown that men and women have different abilities when it comes to the confidence and tolerance regarding the negative response and disagreement
For instance, it’s well accepted that women tend to be less confident than the men throughout the variety of tasks, though that doesn’t mean they score lower in expertise.
The survey also suggested that the critical feedback have a greater effect on the self-esteem of women as compared to men, such as women feel more courage when given a positive feedback and feel lower after some negative comments, whereas men are not much influenced either way
The difference of conflict tolerance
Then there are gender difference in the conflicts. In general the women are likely to avoid conflict and are more negotiating. However, when women get involved in a conflict they feel more emotionally exhausted, anxious, sensitive, with negative immune responses as compared to men. Additionally, when women express more anger, they are more penalized than men and when they assert themselves they are more backlashed and judged more critically for even the smallest of mistakes
Since making contribution to wikipedia usually means deleting or reverting another editor’s contribution and so conflict is obvious. It not just proofreading its almost editing wars and heated argument among the wikipedia editors, harassments and hostile environment that’s particularly unappealing for women