Centre for Internet and Society

Bridging the Gender Gap: A Report on Indian Language Wikimedia Communities

bhuvana — 2021-05-15T12:26:52Z

This research study documents the gender gap and bias in Indian language Wikimedia projects and communities, with a focus on participation by and content related to women contributors across diverse Wikimedia platforms. The research was undertaken by Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and additional inputs from Ambika Tandon and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

The full report can be read here.

Also read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

This research project is a study of how various language communities in India perceive the gender gap in their own contexts, and how the understanding of this subject has varied over time. Wikimedia characterises ‘gender bias’ on its platforms as the fact “that Wikipedia contributors are mostly male, the fact that relatively few biographies on Wikipedia are about women, and the concept that topics of interest to women are less well-covered.”[1] Studies done over the last several years have shown that ‘this gender gap’ results in not only a lesser number of women participants in Wikimedia events or number of edits by women, but also a range of such disparities in the active participation of men and women on various aspects of Wikimedia projects.These gaps vary depending on socio-cultural factors within diverse language communities, such as access to internet and digital technologies and public spaces by women, skill-building and training, labour and time available for voluntary work and development of friendly and accessible working environments.

Context and Methods

Previous research by Ting-Yi Chang (2018) and Eva Jadine Lannon (2013) undertaken with CIS-A2K indicate the existence of these disparities and knowledge gaps in Indian language Wikimedia communities, and emphasise that it is imperative to focus on not only representation but also quality of contributions on Wikimedia by individuals across the spectrum of gender and sexual identities. The research also offers incentives, possible outcomes and sustainable strategies needed to address this issue. In the last few years a lot more work has emerged on this issue in various language communities globally, and in India. Several Indian language communities have started to explore the need for focusing on gender gap and community health initiatives in their own contexts. Observations from these initiatives further reiterate that this gap continues to exist and there is a need to study and better understand the reasons for its prevalence.

As part of this study, we interviewed 15 women respondents across 13 different Indian language Wikimedia communities (including English) who contribute to several Wikimedia projects, and conducted 2 Focus Group Discussions(FGDs). The FGDs were conducted with women students from two different arts and science colleges in Tamil Nadu. The interviews and FGDs primarily helped us understand their perceptions about gender gap, the challenges that they and/or their communities experience in terms of gender bias and also the interesting initiatives set up to address these problems, both in terms of content and participation.

Key Research Areas

The research focussed on three main thematic areas, namely:

Developing a better understanding of online participation - in terms of content created by women, content about women, and online engagement with communities.

As most of the engagement with Wikimedia projects is an online activity so an analysis of the accessibility of internet and other digital infrastructures, platforms and participation guidelines were discussed. Improvements on providing support and training to access platforms would help in furthering participation to contribute to Wikimedia projects and initiatives. Restrictions on offline meetings due to the COVID 19 pandemic has further spurred a lot of online meetings and engagement. Awareness and training on the use of virtual platforms along with friendly space policies could help in creating a structured online experience on Wikimedia for the women in the community.

Developing a better understanding of women’s offline community participation.

Offline participation by women contributors in Indian language Wikimedia communities is an ideal space for learning new skills, working on collaborative events like edit-a-thons or a general discussion among the members of the community. Preference for independent events, discussions such as women-only forums led by women leaders/mentors were suggested by the interviewees. The difficulty of managing voluntary work with professional and domestic responsibilities, and need for support with travel and participation in offline events are some of the challenges highlighted from the interviews.

Enhancing sustained participation of women contributors - identifying challenges with retention, infrastructural issues etc, and possibilities and strategies to address the same, and creating awareness on how women can be involved with all Wikimedia projects.

We tried to understand what are impediments to sustaining Wikimedia contributions by and about women, and possible strategies to address the same. These include the need to encourage more efforts in areas such as detailed documentation of metrics on gender and diversity, building more awareness within communities about gender gap/bias and building relevant technological and communication skills, and addressing community health and conflict management as an important area of work and engagement.

Learnings

The learnings from the study offered insights into several key aspects of the problem of gender gap on Wikimedia, such as the need to encourage sustainable contributions through multiple strategies addressing challenges faced by women and other marginalised groups engaging with Wikimedia projects. This includes efforts to build awareness about gender gap and bias in Indian language communities, undertaking training to address technological and communication gaps and skills, understanding and accommodating the different demands that women editors have on their time and labour with respect to professional, domestic and care work, and according more visibility and recognition towards their efforts on Wikimedia. In addition to this, recognising and actively working towards addressing systemic power asymmetries in online platforms, by creating friendly working environments and encouraging women participants to take ownership and lead initiatives would be imperative to foster long-term and productive engagement with Wikimedia. Based on these observations, the report also offers a set of recommendations, which may also inform existing and emerging efforts to address the problem of gender bias and gender gap on Wikimedia platforms.

References

[1] “Gender Bias on Wikipedia”, Wikipedia, accessed November 29, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia&oldid=991093125

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities

Indian Wikimedian Communities and the Gender Gap - A Space of Change, Negotiation, and Growth

bhuvana — 2020-03-09T12:15:16Z

This blog post covers key findings of the Wikipedia Gender Gap research completed by Ting-Yi Chang in April 2018. The paper was titled “Examining Female Editors’ Identity and Agency Negotiation Process within Indian Wikimedia Projects and Communities”. Here Ting-Yi brings us several observations on how the contributions by women editors' impacts Indian Wikimedia. This research focuses on participation of the women in Wikimedia activities with an emphasis on creating safe spaces and encouraging skill development.

More than two years have passed since I left India and the Indian Wikimedian communities who supported my research with considerable generosity and invaluable insights. The paper “Examining Female Editors’ Identity and Agency Negotiation Process within Indian Wikimedia Projects and Communities” was eventually finished in April 2018, featuring a qualitative analysis on 21 female Indian Wikimedians’ experiences within the communities^{^[1]}.

Due to the nature of a university thesis, the paper put great emphasis on theoretical framework testing and application, which was a good exercise for a young researcher but a rather non-approachable piece for the general public. This blog post serves to mitigate this gap to cover the key findings through 6 Q&As.

Research Context
When engaging with Indian Wikimedian Communities and looking at literature on Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), I figured that a lot of attention was given to the question of access, awareness, and skills - “Do women have internet access and devices?” “Is there enough awareness among women?” “Do women have enough technical skills to participate in online activities?”

However, for me, empowerment means asking more than these questions. After a woman has gained enough access, awareness, and skills, shouldn’t we ask: “How does she feel when she goes online or participate in a project like Wikipedia editing?” “Does her identity as a woman influence her power and the choices she makes in a male-dominant online community?” “How can we do better as a community to sensitize ourselves and make women feel more welcoming in the online space?”

This research hence used Wikimedian Communities in India as a case study to answer the following questions:

Q1: Is a free and open knowledge movement friendly to female Wikimedians and beginners?
The research found that almost all female participants who we interviewed expressed that they are in support of a free and open knowledge movement. Some of them also stated that their pride and passion in their mother tongue and culture was a major factor that motivates their participation. However, while answering this question, many also mentioned the barriers posed by a “free” movement. Since participating in Wikimedia projects is a volunteer work, some female Wikimedians reflected that they had to face doubts and questioning from their family who did not see their involvement as something beneficial - at least not on a monetary level. Many also mentioned the opportunity costs that are unique to a female Wikimedian. For example, women may be expected to take up more caretaking and household chores that would prevent them from going to community meetups and editing events. In other words, a “free” and “volunteer-based” project imposes an invisible threshold of privileges - those who have higher educational backgrounds, more disposable income and time are more likely to participate. Hence, Wikimedia projects’ free and open nature could be a double edged sword.

Q2: Is a Wikimedian community an effective space for gender/feminist movements?
Since there is an increase in the awareness of the Wikipedia gender gap and in the number of Gender Gap Bridging initiatives, it is easy to assume that a Wikimedian community is an effective space for movements. However, our research found that these movements and initiatives in Indian Wikimedian Communities have usually been small by scale, temporary, and event-based (e.g. gender gap bridging themed edit-a-thons). The reason behind could be that Wikimedian Communities’ main objective is essentially content creation, resulting in the situation that movements are usually associated with content creating activities. Alternatively, having the space for “non-productive” discussion and sensitizing training could in fact be productive and helpful for the community health as a whole. For example, I noted that building a “socializing” space creates a sense of belonging to many female Wikimedians and could possibly increase their willingness to be part of the projects in the long run.

Q3: Do female Wikimedians find that their online identity are unaffected by offline identities such as gender?
To quickly answer this question - No, a woman’s offline identity is very much connected to her online identity and experience. Through the interview process, we’ve learned that many female Wikimedians have chosen to primarily engage online in order to avoid uncomfortable offline interaction. However, it was also mentioned that online harassment, threats, and discrimination are still a common experience. Some informants also mentioned that in such close-knit communities like the Indian Wikimedian Communities, it is hard to be fully online or anonymous. Offline interaction and events actually are a very important part of community engagement that female Wikimedians risk missing out on. Hence, reconstructing both the online and offline community space are necessary as there is no one space that is “genderless.”

Q4: Do female Wikimedians perceive that they are treated fairly and receive equitable resources and opportunities within the Wikimedian communities?
Many female Wikimedians reflected that they felt welcome and treated equality as members of the Wikimedian Communities. Some even raise examples on how they were recognized as key contributors in their language communities. However, there are also comments on the “tokenizing” aspect of a seemingly well-intended, equitable practice. In one interview, an informant mentioned that she was “reminded” that the opportunity she was given was a perk based on her gender. Yet another informant stated that she was given opportunities but not on a decision-making level. Some other informants also mentioned that in order for women to be recognized as productive contributors, there needs to be changes on the inherent biased guidelines on what is “verifiable” and “notable” knowledge. In other words, it is not only on a community level that women could face discrimination, it is also in the knowledge system where we must challenge inequality.

Q5: Do female Wikimedians feel free when they are editing and engaging in the communities?
Many female Wikimedians stated that they feel free as in free to edit and to learn. Some, however, stated that when it comes to procedural freedom on how they should be writing and how they should contribute in the community, there are still certain pressure on women imposed by more experienced Wikimedians.

Q6: Does participating in Wikimedian community activities help female Wikimedians gain confidence and skills to pursue self-realization?
Most female Wikimedians who had worked on the projects for a while and took leadership positions in their communities commented that the experience enabled them to adopt new skills and confidence that they found useful in Wikimedia projects and beyond. Many commented that they were able to explore different possibilities and knowledge through the projects and through learning with the communities who have taught to inspired them. Some, however, also mentioned that although they have gained new skills, there is a certain level of self-censorship on things a female Wikimedian could say and edit on. For example, they take “calculated risk” when editing Wikipedia pages on feminist topics and other more debated gender issues which often attract conflicts. Some also mentioned that their self-realization and accomplishments need to be recognized instead of belittled or brushed off because of their gender. This reminds us that building confidence, skills, and pursuing self-realization is not an individual goal, it is so intrinsically connected to the community that we work together. Creating and maintaining a healthy community culture is hence imperative.

The link to the full paper can be found here.

^{^[1]} There were 23 informants participating in the research data collection process. 21 of them were female-identified individuals while the remaining 2 non-female interviewees were key informants within the communities.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/indian-wikimedian-communities-and-the-gender-gap-a-space-of-change-negotiation-and-growth

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

bhuvana — 2019-10-03T11:56:37Z

There is a need for research on how Open Source communities are trying to balance the gender ratio and how they provide the safe space environment to its contributors. With this in mind I have come up with this blog as I am an active contributor of Mozilla since 5 years and also got myself recently introduced to Wikimedia and its sister projects, have interacted with few Indian women contributors in both of these communities and came out with a few observations on how I see them in India and what could be improved in both communities.

Opening note

Wikipedia community

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of articles where many users can edit it freely and it has become so large that you run across it all the time in Google. It is so popular that it is now one of the Top 5 websites in the world! The reason behind the growth is because the articles are simple and useful.

Wikipedians are the contributors who do a communal work to improve the content by editing bits of text and cluster them to the large database. Beyond this there are other sister projects of Wikimedia which interest the audience on whichever they are expertise about. The main motivation for these contributors is their freedom to contribute in their own native language which they are more passionate about. This is a great social cause they are contributing towards.

Mozilla community

Mozilla makes browsers, apps, code and tools that put people before profit. In fact, there’s a non-profit Foundation at the heart of the enterprise.Their mission is to keep the internet open and accessible to all. Hope everyone uses or had at least at some point seen Firefox browser/logo, so this is the prime product of Mozilla. There are various projects to support the Firefox browser and they are mostly Open Source.

Mozillians are the volunteers who contribute in the improvement of these projects thus helping the world to access the internet and the Open web.Mozilla Volunteers are passionate to learn,collaborate and knowledge share among a large world-wide community and the crew is a mix of coder, non-coders, policy makers and anyone who supports Open Web. The point that drives everyone to contribute is that the community creates a vibe to contribute and to create a safe and better experience in accessing the digital world.

WikiProject Women

This a group of editors who aim to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women's topics. It brings Wikipedia users of all genders, sexual orientations, geographic locations, and personal backgrounds together to discuss and collaborate on coverage of women's content across Wikipedia.There are various streams in which women can be part of the larger mission for instance:

Art and Feminism

Women in Red

Wiki loves women

Womoz

Women & Mozilla ("WoMoz") a community composed of members from different Open Source projects.It is mainly dedicated to improving women's visibility and involvement in Free/Open Source and Mozilla, and to increase the number of women contributors. Anyone can participate in this project, regardless of sex, age, job, etc. We are united by the common goal of promoting women's visibility and involvement in open source communities. They also believe that the Internet, FLOSS projects and computing must remain open and participatory. This also means accessible in the same way to all - women and men alike.

It also believe solutions should continuously be proposed in order to improve the visibility of all minorities, who for various reasons might not have equal access to computers or the Internet. This project is an example of this, as it aims at ameliorating women's presence and participation in Mozilla and open source. But currently this group is not very active, except for a few regional contributors where they find massive necessity to focus on the women participation.

Overview of the strategies used for increasing women participation

Methodologies used

Both the communities are great supporters of the Free Softwares and licenses and so the methods that is used in addressing the gender gap issues is as follows:

Conduct gender neutral events like hack-a-thons/ edit-a-thons where the tutor is a woman or there is a large ratio of under represented community in the event.
Host monthly offline/online meetups.
Work on projects which are gender neutral based.
Following up special protocols like CoCs strictly at these events.
Days like “International Women’s Day” and on similar significant occasions some unique events will be hosted and contributors will be appreciated.

Impact on Indian communities

The WikiProject woman and WoMoz programs play a very important role among the Indian communities. Although I do not see a single or uniform progress there is always a good scale-up among the regional communities. For a country like India where there is still necessity for uplifting the presence and awareness of these type of FOSS programs I feel that most of these programs are extensively hosted in urban or developed phases of the country. Recently, the internet access has spread across but then the basic knowledge of contributing to Open Source is still abandoned. The end result and the what the contributors shall get on contributing to these communities must be emphasised more.

Closing note

My study and analysis on these two communities is drawn from personal interest and engagement with these communities since I have been contributing and interacting with the contributors for the last few years. The objective of this post is basically to bring about an awareness on the accessible resources on bridging the digital divide , and how these resources can be modified and taken further for a country like India. The efforts taken to improve the gender neutrality by the above communities is laudable but more light has to be thrown on improving the measures taken to sustain women contributors

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/

http://www.womoz.org/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/analysis-on-the-strategies-of-mozilla-and-wiki-communities-on-gender-gap-aspects-1

Map of KMC

bhuvana — 2020-11-10T18:08:47Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Map_of_KMC_graded_heritage_buildings_generated_by_Wikidata_SPARQL_query.png

Call for joining the Free Knowledge movement #Wikipedia #Wikimedia

bhuvana — 2019-08-20T07:15:30Z

Every little drop makes a Mighty ocean! Join us in this Free Knowledge movement where your contributions will be used world-wide.

Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet and Society is the partner of the Wikimedia Foundations and the Wikimedia movement. Our work is to support Wikipedia/ Wikimedia projects in India. We conduct and support a series of skill building initiative such as workshops, meetups, photo walks, contest, edit-a-thon etc. We also attend to build sustainable partnerships with institutions, organizations, groups and communities which support the Wikimedia communities to build and improve the content in Wikipedia and other projects.

Are you an individual or do you represent any organisation, institution, groups or enterprises? You can actually help the ‘Free Knowledge’ movement by donating photos, media, content or archives. Let us tell you how.

Wikipedia is a widely read website in the current world. According to Alexa’s rating, Wikipedia is the 5th most highly rated in the world. Also certainly we can say that after searching your query on Google (or any other search engine you use) you should have found Wikipedia as a preferable suggestion or result. We find it astonishing that all content of Wikipedia and its sister projects are created, modified and maintained by volunteers, here we need your support. There are many articles on Wikipedia which are being read by thousands of people but do not have relevant images. The problem is simple there is not any free image available. On Wikimedia/Wikipedia we take copyright very seriously and cannot use any content unless it is on public domain/ under free license/ copyright owner donates it under free license.

For example, there is an article on 2019 Kerala floods which is read by 2000 unique readers at this moment but we do not have sufficient photo coverage. Similarly, we have an article on a famous writer say, Ruskin Bond here also we do not have many photos on him or his works.

Wikimedia community is an independent community. Community decides by itself the content, its style including the media files to be included after detailed instructions. Although we cannot instruct the community we can provide resources which will definitely be of help for the free knowledge movement.

This article is an open call to “YOU” to support the free knowledge movement and Wikimedia movement by donating useful content. The content might be video, useful photos, database and audio. The content you are donating must be under Creative Commons Share-like content. You must have the copyright of the content under CC licenses,a CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon the work that they (the author) have created. Attributions will be given under every file details.

Think of a world where your content can also be part of the larger free knowledge movement?

This is the overall idea in a nutshell. We are eager to discuss every aspect of the process and your questions in detail. Please feel free to contact Tito Dutta(tito@cis-india.org). Let's schedule a call or meet in person.

[Currently the A2K is conducting a content donation drive and awareness campaign. This blog post was written as a part of this initiative ]

CIS-A2K logo

bhuvana — 2019-08-19T13:00:40Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-logo

Freeknowledgde

bhuvana — 2019-08-20T07:10:40Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/freeknowledgde