What is the actual presence of women editors at Wikipedia in Spanish? And for what reasons do they publish or not their gender in their personal space? These are the questions that the research project “Where are women editors at Wikipedia: absent or hidden?” aims to answer.

The project is led by Julio Meneses, professor of Psychology and Educational Studies at the UOC and researcher of GenTIC, and has received funding from “La Caixa” Bank Foundation through the UOC call for grants for interdisciplinary research projects 2018.

Wikipedia is the greatest collaborative effort ever known. It is the sixth most visited internet site and contains 47 million articles in 288 different languages. Although its edition is free, it is estimated that only 10 or 15{973f38f2103d51d876dca70e6831e30c6a586ba395c130b41c97ba08f8704c0a} of the people who edit are women. This fact has implications: the female representation on the Wikipedia contents is very low.

Among the explanations that have been given so far to women’s low participation, it has been pointed out that Wikipedia is a masculinised community where women experience lack of confidence about the required technical skills, besides trying to avoid criticisms and confrontations usually linked to edition debates. This research will attempt to identify the causes that may lead many women to hide their gender at Wikipedia or not to participate in this community, in order to draw conclusions and recommendations that help to reduce gender bias on the most consulted source of information in the world.

Start date: January 2018 – End date: December 2018

Principal investigator: Julio Meneses

Research team:

Eduard Aibar
Sergi Fàbregues
Núria Ferran
Julià Minguillón

Funding body: