Centre for Internet and Society

Preliminary research result on Wikipedia gender gap in India

ting — 2017-05-23T11:09:23Z

Since June 2016, Ting-Yi Chang from the University of Toronto has worked with the CIS-A2K team to conduct action research on the Wikipedia gender gap in India. The research aims to improve the understanding of the gender gap (imbalance) issue in the Indian Wikipedia communities while examining local interventions.

This post is an extraction from the Wikipedia Gender Gap Bridging Toolkit - South Asia Edition which will be published on Wiki (Commons and meta) in late May 2017. The toolkit is a derivative of the gender gap research initiative.

Wikipedia has a wide gender gap in participation and content coverage. The editor survey in 2011 showed that among the active editors worldwide only 9% identified themselves as female. While research and initiatives have been proposed and conducted to “bridge the gender gap,” mass majority of these studies are done in the Western context (English/European language Wikipedias and communities). The movement dynamics and situation of other Wikipedian communities are not well explored or documented. Of the few studies that did focus on non-Western contexts, this action research is one of the few to look at the issue in India.

Due to the timeline of the research and the limitation of space in this post, we will only discuss the preliminary findings of the study, specifically for the following questions:

Q1: What are existing female Wikipedians’ (regardless of one’s activeness in editing) experience in the Wikimedian communities?

Q2: What are new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in gender gap bridging events) attitude and preference toward these gender gap bridging activities?

In Q1, we used open coding to find recurring themes in the qualitative data collected through 18 semi-structured interviews with 21 female Wikipedians, and label them to find certain patterns of answers. To answer question 2, discussion and infographics will be presented to summarize the 64 survey responses we have gathered.

Q1: What are existing female Wikipedians’ experience in the Wikimedian communities?

Western-based research and survey has shown that a plausible reason behind the gender gap on Wikipedia is the discriminatory and unwelcoming environment within the editor communities. Research was much needed to explore the reasons in the Indian context as we cannot simply apply the same results or rule out the possibility of the same situation. Among the 9 reasons that Sue Gardner, the former Executive Director of WMF, had pointed out in her 2011 blog post, we deem the “misogynist atmosphere” as the most problematic - it signals an unhealthy environment and structure for diversity and long term growth.

Thus, 18 private interviews were held to understand the positive and negative experience that existing female (Indian) Wikipedians have faced in the communities. In this question we are specifically looking at the interaction and interpersonal relationship between community members (editors), hence it does not include experiences like discouragement from speedy deletion or technical difficulty in editing.

In each of the two categories (positive and negative), we use three labels to cover the recurring themes mentioned. In “positive experience,” these are (a) emotional support and respect, (b) bonding and friendship, and (c) other support. In “negative experience,” the three labels are (a) neglected or belittled, (b) sexist comments, and (c) safety concern.

It is interesting to note that although in most (Western-based) research, the positive and negative experiences were in the online context, our interviewees (Indian female Wikipedians) had mostly pointed out experiences that were either offline or in non-specified context. Comments on the online interaction dynamics were fairly rare and neutral, while negative experiences mostly occurred in the offline settings.

This can indicate that the communities’ offline interaction dynamics leaves a much more significant impression (sadly, especially when it is negative) to female Wikipedians on their overall community experience. Additionally, it seems that compared to the Western/English context, Indian Wikipedian communities are more close-knit and active offline, that is, the editors are more likely to know each other personally. This dynamic is a great plus to create positive experience such as strong bonding and emotional support. However, it may also be more toxic when the experience is negative as compared to if the experience was online and anonymous. In other words, sexist comments, deliberate neglect, and safety concerns can have an aggravated effect when faced personally.

In numbers, more positive experiences were mentioned than negative ones when a neutral question was asked (such as “How do you think about the community?” / ”what is your experience in the editor community so far?”). Most negative experience were only revealed when a negative-oriented question was asked (such as “Have you had any negative or uncomfortable experience so far?”). This may be interpreted that the interviewees’ overall experiences are positive with only occasional negative encounters. However, this interpretation can still be biased if we consider the possibility that:

There is a lack of trust between the researcher and the interviewees (i.e. Interviewees may have the intention to provide a more pleasing/non-controversial answer), or
the selection of our interviewees was already biased since “existing” female Wikipedians can be those that have not experienced much negative experience (i.e. the female editors who were upset by more negative experiences and had already quit editing were not reachable when the interviews were conducted, or they might simply be uninterested in participating in the research).

Q2: What are new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in gender gap bridging events) attitude and preference toward these gender gap bridging activities?

As indicated in our last question, the offline interaction and activities seem to be very crucial in determining a female Wikipedian’s overall experience in the community. In other questions throughout the semi-structured interview, we had asked existing female Wikipedians - who had been active in gender gap bridging event conduct - to discuss what can make an event more welcoming to women. Below are some of the answers given:

A women-only event (although some also criticized that this approach often made the gender gap a “women-only” discussion)
Female tutor’s presence
Offline events where women can meet others face to face (although some had mention that they prefer to participate online - which makes them feel safer and more comfortable)
The chance for participants to socialize and make friends
Write about women-related topics (although some had argued that a gender gap bridging event should not promote the tokenizing logic that (only) women should (only) edit on women-related topics)

As you may notice, there are divergence of ideas regarding the points A, C, and E. In order to cross-check all these ideas, a survey of 11 scale-rating questions was developed to understand the new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in a gender gap bridging event) attitude and preferences. Three clusters of questions were formed - general experience, cross-checking questions, and attitude.

Below is an infographics on the 64 responses we had collected: (You may click on the image at the top of this page (under the blog title) to zoom in)

From the infographics above we can see that event participants’ overall experience are positive. However, it may still be far from perfect as there were 2 respondents who “fully disagreed” with the statement “I find the event environment safe, friendly, and welcoming.” There are still more than 40% of the respondents who thought editing is difficult (or somewhat difficult), which means improvement is needed in our event tutorship or a re-estimation participants’ skill levels is needed. Participants’ attitude towards the events was also mostly positive as indicated in the last two questions.

Cross-checking (A): Do women prefer a women-only event?

During the events, the presenters and resource persons usually encouraged male participation in the initiatives and stressed that the gender gap bridging efforts cannot be a further segregation between men and women editors. Hence, we do expect this to influence the answers given to the statement “I still prefer a women-only event.” Still, more than one-third of the participants indicated their preference in women-only events; we expect the actual rate to be even higher if the said factor was not present.

Cross-checking (B): Is the presence of female tutor(s) important? (Does a tutor’s gender matter?)

Question 5 and 6 show very interesting results. In the offline (in real life) event context, there seem to be more disagreement on the statement “I would prefer a woman to be my tutor.” These responses can be affected by the fact that majority of the tutors in Wikipedia events were still men, and if a participant had generally positive experience throughout the event, they might not be against the idea of having a male tutor again. Nonetheless, interestingly, the answer turned the other way around when the scenario changed to an “online” setting. More respondents then agreed that they would prefer a women as their tutor. This may be a sign that women are more alert and defensive when it comes to online interaction with people in the opposite sex.

Cross-checking (C) : Do women prefer offline (in-real-life) events over online ones?

Over 50% of the respondents chose “fully agree” to the statement while only 5 respondents chose either fully or partially disagree. We can conclude that women who had experience in an offline (in-real-life) event would still prefer the same setting in the future. However, of course, we cannot be sure how many women may have turned down this first event experience because it was offline. In other words, we do not know if the preference of women who had never attended any events. However, what we know is that mass majority of those who had one offline event experience would prefer the offline setting over an online participation.

Cross-checking (D): Does socializing matter to women?

Majority of the respondents fully agreed with the statement “I would like to socialize with and know more Wikipedians.” This is one of the very few questions where no one disagreed to. Although we cannot calculate the personal utility of socializing or conclude that socializing is “necessary” to make women feel more comfortable, we can assume that it will be a positive addition to the events if women can make new friends in the communities.

Cross-checking (E): Are women interested in women-related topics? Or would they have preferred to write about their expertise areas?

From the survey, we found that more women actually showed interest in writing on women-related topics than on their domain knowledge subjects. Over 80% of the respondents agreed that they were interested in writing more about women (and related topics) while slightly fewer women said the same about their expertise knowledge. Only 8 out of 64 respondents expressed a preference for writing on their domain knowledge topics over women-related topics. Hence, it seems that women-related topics are a good place to start (for one’s first Wikipedia event experience) as most women enjoyed it. One thing we are not able to estimate is how long can this interest be sustained.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/preliminary-research-result-on-wikipedia-gender-gap-in-india

Japleen Pasricha - Gendered Spaces in Digital Rights (Delhi, June 02, 5 pm)

sumandro — 2017-05-31T03:49:26Z

It is our priviledge to annouce that Japleen Pasricha will be the speaker for the June #FirstFridayAtCIS event. Japleen smashes the patriarchy for a living, and is Founder & Editor-in-chief of Feminism in India. The talk will focus on her experience of working on gender and digital rights in India, the ways in which "gender" functions as a critical lens in digital rights discourse and practice in India (or not), and the gendered nature of digital rights spaces in India. If you are joining us, please RSVP at the soonest as we have only limited space in our office.

Japleen Pasricha

Founder & Editor-in-chief, Feminism in India

Japleen smashes the patriarchy for a living. Founder & Editor-in-chief of Feminism in India, she is a feminist activist based in New Delhi, India. She is a writer, educator, campaigner and researcher. She has vast experience in digital media and online publishing. Her interest lies in women’s studies, global feminism, gender, sexuality, VAW, SRHR, feminist praxis and internet as a space. Currently she is working on online violence against women and media representation of gender and gender-based violence. She’d like to use skills to intersect gender and sexuality with digital & social media and develop safe online spaces for women and marginalized communities.

RSVP

Location

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/firstfridayatcis-japleen-pasricha-gendered-spaces-in-digital-rights-delhi-june-02

Only 8.5pc of Wikipedia Editors are Women. How do we fix the Gender Gap on the Internet?

ting — 2017-02-09T02:49:47Z

Women-related articles are generally shorter, more prone to deletion, and more likely to be peripheral pieces under male-centric articles.

This was published by Your Story on February 7, 2017.

I was beginning an introduction session at a college in Vijayawada. While my audience (mostly female students) was giggling, I wrote down a simple question on the whiteboard:

“I see more men than women in _____”

The response was some more shy giggling until some students slowly raised their hands. “Sports!” “Technology companies!” “Conferences!” “In governments!” “…When I am in my class.” There is no denying that we all observe the underrepresentation of women at some points and occasions in our lives. However, it is much harder to imagine and notice that Wikipedia, the most used online encyclopaedia and the 7^th most visited website worldwide, also poses a problematic imbalance in its content and editor demographics.

In 2011, a survey carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation found that only 8.5 percent of Wikipedia editors were female. Since then, the awareness has risen; many have found the editor demographic imbalance is a strong reflection of what the encyclopaedia does or does not cover, how the written language and discourse were constructed on the pages, and how discussion flows on article talk pages[1].

For example, scholars discovered that women-related articles are generally shorter, more prone to deletion, and more likely to be peripheral pieces under male-centric articles. To elaborate, in the network structure of Wikipedia articles, women’s pages lack centrality as they often provide links and mention related male figures in their writing but not the other way around. A glass ceiling also exists for the notability criteria. The threshold for a woman to be “notable enough” (from the perspective of a male-dominant community) to deserve a Wikipedia page is higher than that of male figures. Thus, the lack of women editors and an already male-centric structure pose a threat not only to the diversity of content but also to the very definition of knowledge.

But why?

For years, the foundation and local communities have tried to discover the reasons behind the gender gap and solutions to it. Former Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner posted on her blog nine reasons that are off-putting for women when they edit Wikipedia.

The non-beginner-friendly editing interface
Lack of personal free time
Lack of confidence and self-efficacy
Unwillingness to stir up or participate in conflicts and edit wars
Feeling that their edits are “too likely to be reverted or deleted”
Misogynistic environment
“Wikipedia culture is sexual”
Being addressed as male in languages that have grammatical gender
Wikipedia is not as socialising or as welcoming as other websites

In India and other parts of the world, various reasons can also contribute to the problem. Awareness, for example, is the first barrier to be tackled. Many women did not know that Wikipedia is editable or that there are Indian language versions that they can contribute to. Internet access and facilities are a couple more reasons. In case someone does not have a personal computer, a woman is usually more cautious and skeptical when using a public internet café and staying out late. Similarly, families of young women editors can be more concerned about their daughters’ participation in men-organised/male-dominant communities, especially when there are offline (on-site) activities. The roots of the issue are not merely at the community level, but also sociopolitical and cultural.

Many events and initiatives have been carried out from local to global community levels. ‘Women in Red (WiR)’, for example, is a global initiative to bring more women-related articles online. It encourages editors to turn ‘red links’ (non-existing pages) into ‘blue links’ (existing Wikipedia page). The project has helped increase female biographies from 15 percent (November 2014) of total biographies on English Wikipedia to 16.75 percent (November 2016)[2]. In March, Wikipedia communities around the globe also celebrate ‘Women’s History Month’, when edit-a-thons (marathons for Wikipedia editing) are held to help create more women’s articles online as well as to recruit more female volunteers and spread awareness. However, is this enough?

“A new debate: what matters?”

As we are raising more awareness, integrating gender gap issues into the community’s strategy plans and coming up with more intervention ideas to reach more potential women editors, it is time to revisit the meaning behind the work. In my early research time, I was to believe that ‘retention rate’ (whether female participants will stay active after an event), ‘number of articles created’, and the ‘event continuation potentials’ are the key factors in determining whether an event can be called successful. But the ideas have slowly changed as I have got to reach more female participants.

As a matter of fact, Wikipedia is about voluntary contribution and negotiating for consensus in quality knowledge creation as well as maintaining a friendly and open environment for all. In other words, we can ‘nudge’ people into Wikipedia editing but we should not (and need not to) ‘push’ them to do it. Especially in the situation of a wide gender gap, we should not make women feel like they are tokenised in the process — that we are targeting them due to their gender and that they should contribute more because they are female, the minority. When asked about the existing problems in the current gender gap interventions, an active Wikipedian once explained to me:

“Say if you are writing the biography of someone then you should be familiar with and interested in that person’s work. That’s why sometimes those gender-specific edit workshops backfire... If you are creating a bio just because this person is a woman, then I think it is missing the whole point of Wikipedia.”

In my opinion and through discussions with several female Wikipedians, I have realised that there should be a new debate and investigation on how intervention goals should be set and what these actions’ long-term results would be. While focusing on the retention rate of a new Wikipedian after an intervention, we limit ourselves in the frame of time and numbers. We should, instead, understand more about new members’ experiences and feedback to pinpoint the good motivations and expected barriers for them. With this information, we should help establish the motivation in event follow-ups and to minimise their barriers as much as the community can. Secondly, article quality should be stressed upon —even if it takes more time to publish her/his first article, it is a much more fruitful learning experience to understand the responsibility of a Wikipedian. After all, low-quality articles not only do not contribute to Wikipedia content but also lead to more deletion, which can be a discouraging experience for those who are new.

For event continuation, we should guide the participants to community engagement and support them to carry out more event ideas that can suit their interests and goals. In short, it is about creating involvement, discussion, and a sense of community instead of continuously pushing events on our end and have the women be passive participants. When asked about how one can define a “successful gender gap-bridging event,” one of the active organisers told me:

“For me, it is when conversations are happening. It is when we have both men and women, and that we can openly have a discussion about the issue and the difficulties and how we want to see changes.”

To put it simply, I believe that we should look at experiences more than numbers, focus on quality more than quantity, and try to reach people (both men and women) to stimulate discussion more than being fixated on the contents needed to balance out the asymmetry.

How to fix the Wikipedia gender gap is never an easy question to ask, but what I am sure about is that Wikipedia and its communities should be empowering rather than result-oriented and that our learning still has a long way to go.

[1] A “talk page” is attached to each Wikipedia article (found on the top-left corner of an article), where editors can hold discussions and debates or leave comments during the editing process.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/your-story-ting-yi-chang-february-7-2017-only-8.5-percent-of-wikipedia-editors-are-women-how-do-we-fix-the-gender-gap-on-the-internet

Workshop on Feminist Information Infrastructure

ambika — 2019-07-09T15:35:24Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) organised a workshop on feminist infrastructure in collaboration with Blank Noise and Sangama, on 29th October, 2018. The purpose of the workshop was to disseminate the findings from a two-month long project being undertaken by researchers at Blank Noise and Sangama, with research support and training from CIS.

A group of five researchers, one from Blank Noise and four from Sangama, presented their research on different aspects of feminist infrastructure. The workshop was attended by a diverse group of participants, including activists, academics, and representatives from civil society organisations and trade unions.

Feminist infrastructure is a broadly conceptualised term referring to infrastructure that is designed by, and keeping in mind the needs of, diverse social groups with different kinds of marginality. In the field of technology, efforts to conceptualise feminist infrastructure have ranged from rethinking basic technological infrastructure, such as feminist spectrum , to community networks and tools for mobilisation . This project aimed to explore the imagination of feminist infrastructure in the context of different marginalities and lived experiences. Rather than limiting intersectionality to the subject of the research, as with most other feminist projects, this project aimed to produce knowledge from the ‘standpoint’ of those with the lived experience of marginalisation.

This report by Ambika Tandon was edited by Gurshabad Grover and designed by Saumyaa Naidu. The full report can be downloaded here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-may-9-2019-workshop-on-feminist-information-infrastructure

Feminist Design Practices

Aayush Rathi, Akash Sheshadri and Ambika Tandon — 2022-04-16T03:34:51Z

Aayush Rathi and Akash Sheshadri and Ambika Tandon co-authored a research paper on 'Feminist Design Practices' which was published in a special issue of Apria, a peer-reviewed journal hosted at ArtEZ University. The special issue "Feminist by Design" highlights the work of the Feminist Internet Research Network and its contributions to building an equitable internet through design interventions.

Abstract

Feminist and design justice principles can be adopted into research praxis to make knowledge less extractive and more accessible. These principles include making research and outreach more participatory, translating academic knowledge into more accessible forms, and channelling research into action that can challenge patriarchy and other systems of domination.

This paper focusses on the outreach and communication of policy research to outline its potential for producing radical change and translating knowledge across communities. The authors reflect on their experiences of producing research for domestic workers and workers’ collectives in India to highlight challenges and ways forward for accessible research forms.

To access the full article published in Apria, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/artez-platform-aayush-rathi-akash-sheshadri-ambika-tandon-feminist-design-practices

The Gay Pride Charade

nishant — 2016-07-25T01:10:28Z

For most of the milllenials, news is formed by trends, what goes viral, and often open to speculation, projection, manipulation and deceit.

The article was published in Indian Express on July 3, 2016.

The world of social media can be a minefield of misinformation, and it does get difficult to verify facts and ensure the veracity of the information that comes to us on the winged notifications of our apps. This becomes starkly clear in times of crises. Hence, when the historic and heinous shootout at a gay night club in Orlando, USA, shook the world with horror and grief a couple of weeks ago, when the first tweets appeared on my timeline, my initial reaction was denial. Instead of believing those first responders, I was already searching for more credible news lines that could confirm — or hopefully deny — the massacre. It took only a few minutes, though, to realise that #StandWithOrlando was a reality that we will have to accommodate in the story of continued violence and abuse of sexual minorities around the world.

However, not all deception is bad. One of the most fantastic responses to the shoot-out was from a Quebec-based satirical website called JournalDemourreal.com that published a photoshopped image showing the Canadian PM Justin Trudeau kissing the leader of the Canadian opposition party Tom Mulcair, with a headline that the two, despite their differences, are “united against homophobia”. I know that I liked this fake story four times on different newsfeeds, half-believing, half-wishing that it was true, before I realised that it is a hoax. Morphed as it might be, the doctored image enabled people to talk about the tragedy as demanding a personal and a policy-level action, ranging from acceptance and freedom, to control of guns and protecting the rights of life and dignity for the sexual minorities who continue to remain persecuted in the world.

The image also allowed many queer people in different parts of the world — especially in the countries where homosexuality continues to be criminalised and severely punished — to participate not only in the global grief but also to demand that their governments take more responsibility towards its queer population.

While this photoshopped picture was making the rounds, another tweet showed up on my timeline. This time it was a tweet from our media-savvy PM, Narendra Modi, who claimed that he was “shocked at the shootout in Orlando.”And further added that his “thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families and the injured”. When I saw this tweet, my reaction again, was that this must be another joke. Because even as queer rights activists in the country struggle to fight for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, through their curative petitions in the Supreme Court in India, PM Modi’s government has continued its hateful diatribe against queer people in the country. His party has called homosexuality “anti-Indian” and “anti-family”. The party’s favourite, Baba Ramdev, continues his hate speech, offering to cure homosexuality through yoga.

Ever since the current government took power, documented hate crimes against queer people have more than doubled in the country. So when the PM decided to offer his condolences to those in Orlando, I figured that either it was a fake Twitter account masquerading as the PM or it was some kind of a hacker troll — maybe Anonymous, the online guerrilla activists, who recently took over ISIS- friendly websites and filled them up with information about male homosexuality as a response to the shoot-out — had taken control of the Twitter account. But it turned out that this piece of information was not photoshopped or hacked. It was actually true, and we were to believe in earnest that while the government doesn’t care about the millions of queer people being denied their rights to live and love in their country, it is heartbroken about what happened in the USA.

It does make you wonder about the world we live in, where a photoshopped image sounded more plausible than an undoctored tweet. It emphasises why Orlando cannot be treated as one isolated instance in another country, but that #WeAreOrlando. For right now, Orlando is also in India. It is a reminder that while we have been fortunate not to have such an instance of dramatic violence, there are millions of people in the country who are forced to live and die in deception for their sexual orientation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-nishant-shah-july-3-2016-gay-pride-charade

Conference on Safety Against Online Child Sexual Abuse

praskrishna — 2017-03-29T04:10:16Z

Japreet Grewal was a speaker at a conference on safety against online child sexual abuse which was jointly organized by CID, Telangana and the Department for Women Development and Child Welfare, Telangana on March 16 and 17, 2017 in Hyderabad.

Japreet spoke about the existing legal framework in India on online child sexual abuse and the challenges in implementing the preventive and response mechanisms to address this problem. Various stakeholders including media, police, school educators and child protection organisations attended this event.

Read the agenda here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/conference-on-safety-against-online-child-sexual-abuse

Use of mobile phones by vulnerable communities: A survey of sex workers and gay men in Karnataka

Megha Malnad, Parimala, Nagina, and Tasneem Mewa — 2020-07-14T06:32:18Z

This report has been authored by Megha Malnad, Parimala, Nagina, and Tasneem Mewa, and edited by Ambika Tandon, Gurshabad Grover and Rajesh Srinivas.

This report is part two of a two-part series studying the impact of data systems and digital technology on the lives of sexual minorities and sex workers. This project has been jointly conducted by CIS and Sangama.

Abstract

This report discusses social media and mobile phone usage by gay men, and women sex workers in Karnataka. Using primary data collected in 2018, we conclude that phones and social media can be used as a tool to protect oneself from certain kinds of violence, but also enables the perpetuation of other forms of violence. On one hand, mobile phones and social media provide new spaces and avenues to connect with personal and professional contacts; and can afford greater anonymity to vulnerable communities facing stigmatisation. On the other hand, phones and social media apps are another mechanism through which sex workers and gay men face violence and abuse.

The full report can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/use-of-mobile-phones-by-vulnerable-communities-a-survey-of-sex-workers-and-gay-men-in-karnataka

Raina Roy and Abhiraj Bag - Kolkata’s trans community has been locked out of healthcare and livelihood

Raina Roy and Abhiraj Bag — 2020-08-01T14:54:16Z

Over six months into the outbreak of Covid-19 in India, it has become clear that the pandemic does not affect everybody equally. It has amplified the sufferings of the already-marginalised trans community. Raina Roy spoke to 10 trans persons and trans rights activists in Kolkata over the course of the past few months to better understand the situation. The piece was transcribed by Abhiraj Bag and edited by Kaarika Das and Srravya C, researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society, India. This work is part of a project at CIS on gender, welfare and surveillance, supported by Privacy International, United Kingdom.

Originally published by Scroll on July 28, 2020.

Raina is a founder of Samabhabona (Baishamya Durikaran Samiti), a trans-led organisation in Kolkata working with trans rights since 2013. Abhiraj is a trans rights activist based in Kolkata.

Several members of our community have lost their livelihoods due to the lockdown and remain unemployed for over three months now. Those engaged in sex work and begging have no respite in sight for the foreseeable future. As a community, we are more likely to be unemployed as traditional employment opportunities are inaccessible to us. Our health concerns are also diverse, as we grapple with gender dysphoria alongside other psychosocial issues. Covid-19 has exacerbated these inequalities and effectively locked us out of livelihood as well as healthcare.

An alienating system

When it comes to accessing institutional healthcare, visiting hospitals can be a daunting ordeal for trans men and trans women, as we frequently encounter discrimination and stigmatisation from healthcare providers.

Even in emergency cases such as accidents, medical attention is delayed due to confusion whether the patient should be admitted to the male or female ward. Finding compassionate healthcare providers is difficult, especially in government hospitals. Most often, they are not sensitised to trans-health issues.

Such experiences have alienated us from the healthcare system and left several members of the trans community reluctant to seek medical help.

Access to general healthcare has further worsened with Covid-19, as many are unable to seek emergency medical assistance. With no sustainable source of income and deteriorating health condition, elderly trans persons are hit with a double whammy. Despite their failing health, there is presently no provision for routine health check-up which they can avail. The reluctance to consult a healthcare service provider has increased due to the added risk of infection.

SRS services are city-centric

Many in the community had scheduled their sex reassignment surgery or SRS and started taking the necessary hormonal medication. However, because of Covid-19, they have now had to postpone their surgery indefinitely. This uncertainty further aggravated distress together with issues of hormonal imbalance. Due to loss of income, many are resorting to alternative cheap hormonal medication and without proper medical supervision, its consequence could be harmful.

Those who have undergone SRS or are currently on hormone replacement therapy often experience side effects such as rise in blood pressure and blood sugar levels, urinary tract infection, and other immunity-compromising problems. To treat these side-effects, a patient may need to consult an endocrinologist, gynaecologist or urologist. However, such specialists are only available at district hospitals. At the sub-district level, we may be able to consult a gynaecologist at best. An endocrinologist or urologist would be available only if we travelled to the district hospitals or medical college hospitals.

A lockdown spanning over three months, restrictions on travel and closure of public transport have made the city-centric, SRS-related healthcare systems inaccessible to the transgender persons in smaller towns and villages. Pre-Covid-19, a few NGOs and community-based organisations provided sexual health services. However, they were unable to continue their services during the lockdown. This has adversely impacted the trans community’s access to sexual health services.

So far, two trans women have been tested positive for Covid-19 in Kolkata. Thanks to the intervention from activists and other allies, they were quarantined in the female ward when they tested positive. Both were asymptomatic and are presently self-isolating at home. Within the trans community, there is inadequate awareness about Covid-19 testing protocols and procedures. The saving grace has been the dedicated provisioning of ten beds at the MR Bangur Hospital, specifically reserved for transgender persons.

Community care

The most hard-hitting impact of Covid-19 is undoubtedly on the mental health of our community. Often faced with social stigma and physical abuse, we take refuge in the comfort of each other’s support. In the absence of familial ties, community support is vital for our well-being. However, Covid-19 and the consequent lockdown measures, has distanced us from our only source of support and solace – community interaction and meet-ups.

Although digitally mediated communication has somewhat helped in coping, it is not as effective or cathartic as an in-person conversation. This has increased the susceptibility of substance abuse in the community. Parallelly, there has been a considerable rise in domestic violence cases too. Even under normal circumstances, we are more likely to encounter intimate partner violence, but are skeptical to seek redressal as the law-enforcing institutions – both judiciary and the police – are biased against us.

At hospitals, the constant misgendering that we face at the hands of healthcare professionals can be traumatising. Aparna Banerjee, a trans-person in Kolkata, said that this trauma has only worsened during Covid-19, when frontline healthcare workers are not sensitised about trans health. To escape this trauma, some trans women have resorted to unscientific castration, leading to urinary tract infection and kidney-related problems. Gender dysphoria also puts the trans community at a higher risk of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal tendencies.

The political milieu

Such strains on our mental and physical health come at a time when we are already distressed by the thought of being disenfranchised. The latest National Register of Citizens list in Assam had excluded many trans persons, as they couldn’t establish family ties, for being disowned by their families. And if they were included, their gender was incorrectly stated.

With the 2019 Transgender Person Act coming into force, a District Magistrate is given the authority to recognise a person as trans. This defies the right to self-identify, as upheld in the 2014 NALSA judgement. The current provision also necessitates providing proof of surgery and has no consideration for gender incongruence. The burden of providing proof of surgery is unnerving, especially for someone who has just transitioned.

As such, the cumulative impact of the 2019 Transgender Person Act and the Citizenship Amendment Act-National Register of Citizen mandate could lead to a significant part of the community being disenfranchised. In resisting this coercive pronouncement, we staged a protest in Kolkata earlier this year.

What can be done

The health and well-being of the trans community has suffered decades of institutional neglect and the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified this suffering. Remedial policy measures have been long due and cannot be delayed any further. Shelter homes have been one of our long-standing demands, to ensure safety and care for the transgender community, particularly the elderly. It is important that such shelter homes are democratic spaces, and not religious centres, that are welcoming of trans persons from different walks of life.

Secondly, healthcare systems, both public and private, need to be more trans-friendly – doctors, nurses and other staff in hospitals and healthcare centres need to be sensitised and trained to identify and understand the healthcare needs of transmen and transwomen. Recruitment of more transgender people as health workers would go a long way in treating transgender patients more humanely, with support and care.

Measures to contain the spread of the pandemic should include increased testing of transgender persons, and tracking the testing and infection rates among trans persons. Relief measures aimed at addressing the economic crisis need to acknowledge the loss of livelihood in the trans community and provide adequate financial support and compensation. Finally, it is important that governments, both at the centre- and state-level, pay heed to our demands and include representatives from the trans community while formulating policies that impact our lives in significant ways.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/raina-roy-abhiraj-bag-transgender-community-kolkata-covid19-healthcare-livelihood

Why The New Government Policy Mandating Panic Buttons On Phones Isn’t Going To Protect Women

praskrishna — 2016-05-15T09:45:36Z

Recently, the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad tweeted about new rules mandating a panic button in every cell phone sold in the country from January 2017. To keep ladies safe, of course.

The story by Madhura Kadaba was published in the Ladies Finger on May 14, 2016. Rohini Lakshané was quoted.

According to a statement released by the Telecommunications Ministry, the panic button will be activated by pressing a designated button on a smartphone or by holding down both ‘5’ and ‘9’ keys on a basic phone. Pressing the panic button is expected to alert police and designated friends or relatives, similar to apps launched previously by police departments like Himmat.

It followed remarks from the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Ms Maneka Gandhi, in the Lok Sabha in December 2015. “Every cell phone will have an in-built panic button. Now, all new cell phones will be made with panic buttons. But in case of all old cell phones, you can go to the person who owns the company or the dealer and they will adjust it for you. If a woman is in trouble, she can just press the button on the cell phone and she will immediately get help.”

Two days later, reacting to concerns that the mandate could increase mobile phone costs, Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “Manufacturers… have given their support. My expectation is that they will render their support in social justice and women security.”

After a point, it almost becomes a farce — the government’s continuous search for grand, one-stop solutions to dealing with sexual violence. We had the vast coffers of the Nirbhaya fund, which went nowhere. It had tech solutions coming out of its 1000-crore ears. It included plans for setting up control rooms in 114 cities within 9 months back in 2014 and surveillance cameras in all public transport vehicles including autos! Who was going to be watching the feed of these cameras, if ever by some vast change in the face of humanity such a thing happened, you may wonder? Or as journalist Revati Laul wrote, “Given that police stations across the country are short staffed, given how many of them cannot even afford paper to file a first information report (FIR) or fuel for the police personnel’s motorbike, just how will the appearance of these control rooms change that? How will switchboards help if police stations in even big cities like Varanasi have too few vehicles to cater to the existing load of emergencies they have to deal with?” But hush, don’t interrupt when Daddy is talking.

Recently, we published an investigation into the one-stop centres promised by the Nirbhaya fund. These centres are supposed to provide services like assistance in lodging FIRs, medical assistance for medical examinations, and therapy. On paper, Delhi is supposed to have 6. Good luck locating them because they don’t exist. Most of the staff of the hospitals where the centers were to be located were clueless about the program.

But perhaps we should forget the tiresome past and move to the shiny button-filled future. We asked Rohini Lakshane, a technology expert and Program Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society what she thought of panic buttons. Recently she reviewed a bunch of personal safety apps geared toward women and was very unimpressed. About the government’s new plan, she said, “GPS accuracy in India can sometimes be patchy and not very accurate, and continuous location tracking drains the battery, something that could be problematic for people with phones that do not have good GPS hardware or a long battery life.” Lakshane added, “The app would also enable tracking by family members, which can increase the chance of intimate partner abuse and violence. There have been instances in which apps that provide real-time location or periodic updates of the location of a person to a contact have enabled abuse by intimate partners or by members of the family.” In short, you are unlikely to get the help you need in case of stranger danger and continue to face whatever oppression you maybe facing from your ‘loved ones’.

Which brings us to the biggest problem with panic buttons, the idea that what Indian women should live in fear of scary strangers outside the house.

The story by Madhura Kadaba was published in The Ladies Finger on May 14, 2016. Rohini Lakshane was quoted. The story by Madhura Kadaba was published in the Ladies Finger on May 14, 2016. Rohini Lakshane was quoted.

In fact, carefully conducted research shows over and over again that Indian women are most likely to face violence from their families, within their homes. The Mumbai programme RAHAT’s report shows that 91 percent of the accused in reported cases of rape were by known persons. Add on the fact if you have even a fleeting acquaintance with a man who attacks you the police are additionally reluctant to do anything.

Not that the police like to file complaints if you have been raped by a stranger. That way they are quite equal opportunity about ignoring complaints.

Perhaps we should have a panic button in our phones after all. A daily reminder that you should fear rape, in case for a moment you had decided to stop worrying. A daily reminder that if you do get raped you must remember to press a button that goes nowhere. A great metaphor for how we deal with victims of sexual violence in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/why-the-new-government-policy-mandating-panic-buttons-on-phones-isn2019t-going-to-protect-women

A Gendered Future of Work

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — 2020-07-21T06:29:22Z

This paper aims to contextualise the narrative around digitalisation and automation with reference to women's labour in India. The paper has been authored by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, edited by Elonnai Hickok and Rakhi Sehgal. Research assistance has been provided by Divya Kushwaha.

Abstract

Studies around the future of work have predicted technological disruption across industries, leading to a shift in the nature and organisation of work, as well as the substitution of certain kinds of jobs and growth of others. This paper seeks to contextualise this disruption for women workers in India. The paper argues that two aspects of the structuring of the labour market will be pertinent in shaping the future of work: the gendered nature of skilling and skill classification, and occupational segregation along the lines of gender and caste. We will take the case study of the electronics manufacturing sector to flesh out these arguments further. Finally, we bring in a discussion on the platform economy, a key area of discussion under the future of work. We characterise it as both generating employment opportunities, particularly for women, due to the flexible nature of work, and retrenching traditional inequalities built into non-standard employment.

Introduction

The question on the future of work across the global North - and parts of the global South - has recently been raised with regards to technological disruption, as a result of digitisation, and more recently, automation (Leurent et al., 2018). While the former has been successively replacing routine cognitive tasks, the latter, defined as the deployment of cyber-physical systems, will enable the replacement of manual tasks previously being performed using human labour (Leurent et al., 2018). In combination, these are expected to have a twofold effect on: the “structure of employment”, which includes occupational roles and nature of tasks, and “forms of work”, including interpersonal relationships and organization of work (Piasna and Drahokoupil, 2017). Building from historical evidence, the diffusion of digitising or automative technologies can be anticipated to take place differently across economic contexts, with different factors causing varied kinds of technological upgradation across the global North and South. Moreover, occupational analysis projects occupations in the latter to be at a significantly higher risk of being disrupted than the former (WTO, 2017).

However, these concerns are somewhat offset by the barriers to technological adoption that exist in lower income countries such as lower wages, and a relatively higher share of non-routine manual jobs (WTO, 2017). 1 With the global North typically being early and quicker adopters of automation technologies, the differential technology levels in countries have been in fact been utilised to understand global inequality (Foster and Rosenzweig, 2010). Consequently, the labour-cost advantage that economies in the global South enjoy may be eroded, leading to what may be understood as re-shoring/back shoring - a reversal of offshoring (ILO, 2017). This may especially be the case in sectors where there has been a failure to capitalise on the labour-cost advantage by evolving supplier networks to complement assembly activities (such as in manufacturing) (Milington, 2017), or production of high-value services (such as in the services sector).

Extensive work over the past three decades has been conducted on the effects of liberalisation and globalisation on employment for women in the global South. This has explored conditional empowerment and exploitation as women are increasingly employed in factories and offices, with different ways of reproducing and challenging patriarchal relations. However, the effects of reshoring and technological disruption have yet to be explored to any degree of granularity for this population, which arguably will be one of the first to face its effects. This can be seen as a consequence of industries that rely on low cost labour being impacted first by re-shoring, such as textile and apparel and electronics manufacturing (Kucera and Tejani, 2014).

Download the full paper here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-and-aayush-rathi-december-19-2018-a-gendered-future-of-work

Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) Convening Design

Admin — 2019-03-01T01:08:54Z

Ambika Tandon attended a workshop organized by Association for Progressive Communications for grantees of the Feminist Internet Research Network as a panelist on a session on feminist research methods.. The workshop was held from 27 February to 1 March, in Malaysia. Represented from 8 organizations attended the workshop.

Objectives of the convenining

To inaugurate a network of feminist researcher in the field of digital technology for ongoing collaboration, advice and active solidarity.
To start trust building within the network through shared values and plot how it will work and how it will expand.
To facilitate exchange of learnings and capacity building among the network members and other resource persons, in particular.
To facilitate peer-feedback, collaboration and interdisciplinary discussions on research design, methodologies and research plans of the selected projects and other resource persons.
To get feedback on overall FIRN project research methodology/design.
To explore new and innovative methods, as well as get understand key developments and challenges in more established ways of collecting and analysing data in the four areas of the research initiative.

For more information click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/firn-convening-design

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 1)

ting — 2016-09-21T10:13:59Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.

“Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors…. only 8.5% of editors are women.”

Probably the most cited statement for Wikipedia gender gap studies, the editor survey conducted by Wikimedia Foundation in April 2011 revealed the alarming imbalance within the online encyclopedia community(s). In the same survey, the percentage of female Wikipedians in India is reported as only 3%. When we have repeatedly emphasized on the development and changes the internet can bring to our societies, how do we ensure that behind our computer screen it is not just another mirror reflecting what has been silenced and forgotten?

What is the Wikipedia gender gap?

There are two main focus on the gender gap within Wikipedia – the editor demographic and the coverage of topics – which are essentially flip sides of a coin. With fewer female contributors, we are losing a more diverse knowledge platform for all. But the issue is far more complex than simply having less information about “friendship bracelets” than “baseball cards.”

Looking at the biography pages on Wikipedia, researchers found that not only is the number of female biographies much lower than males’ (due to historical factors, availability of firsthand sources, and editors’ interest), but the linguistic and topical bias within also presents a male-centered discourse. For example, on women’s biography pages, words related to one’s gender such as “women,” “female,” “lady” will be used more commonly than the counterpart words in men’s pages; and that a women’s biography will have more information about her marriage and family life than her male counterpart’s. Studies also found that female-related articles are more likely to be linked to male-related ones but not the other way around[1]. This demonstrates that the editing preference, styles, and content are closely related to the editors’ genders and how they see the world. In other words, language and knowledge cannot be separated from one’s gender – the Internet may be bodiless but it can never become genderless[2].

Wagner et al.’s paper[3] in early 2016 also confirmed the existence of a “glass ceiling” for female figures to be considered “notable” enough to have a Wikipedia bio page (or for the page not to be deleted). Who gets to decide what is “notable enough” becomes questionable when we understand the gender bias. As a matter of fact, while the difference in male and female biography numbers is narrower for globally known figures, a larger gender gap exists for “local hero(ine)s” because of the notability threshold applied. That is to say, many women and female-related topics are underrepresented (and underappreciated) on Wikipedia.

The danger and why it matters

Low awareness

The Wikipedia gender gap is problematic and deserves more attention than ever not only because gender imbalance should be tackled both online and offline, but also that this imbalance is so prevalent and has been taken for granted by most. Little do people consider, that with every single “click” on one’s google search, we can be provided with an answer from a single-gender narration. This imbalance and its problems are behind the scene – the share of male and female editors are never on the surface without a holistic survey. While gender balance has been pushed in our business, education, and government sectors, the online encyclopedia feeding billions of internet users (and over 300 million in India itself) is still constructed in a male-dominant culture with little questioning from the public.

Legacy and influence

There is the saying that Internet is changing the human default from “forgetting” into “remembering.” Wikipedia can serve as a great tool for digitization of knowledge and the preservation of languages. What is to be recorded now will become parts of (perhaps the most accessible) history in the future, and we cannot afford a history without women’s voices and knowledge. Hence, to include more women editors and women-related content is not simply out of a concern of diversity, it is to ensure that this time we can pass on the legacy in a better and more equitable fashion for the whole population.

The vicious circle

“We’ve to participate in meet ups and workshops, then question (from family members) arises like how many guys are there, is there any girl or not. In one sentence we're discouraged by our surrounding.”

– Female editor from local community

The urgency of this problem is that the lesser women are presented in the communities, the harder a motivation can be established for new female editors to join. Now that we have made this issue visible, the core mission we have is to ensure a change in the system and environment that helps women feel more welcomed and comfortable – even when they are aware that they are the minority.

In the next part of this blog series: Why is there a Gender Gap?

[1] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

Graells-Garrido, Lalmas, & Menczer, (2015). First women second sex: gender bias in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media (pp165).

Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

[2] Code, L. (2000). Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London: Routledge

[3] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-1

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 2)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:55:39Z

In the last part of the blog series, we examined the definition and danger of the Wikipedia gender gap. This issue has been puzzling for many – why is there such a wide gap globally?

Why is there a gender gap?

The reasons behind the Wikipedia gender gap are complex and culturally-sensitive. Two main types of barriers are discussed as “inside of Wikipedia (internal)” and “outside of Wikipedia (external).”

Internal	External
Challenges using Wiki mark-up and its interface	Limited access to internet and facilities
(rare in India) Challenges in getting help from community members	Lack of skills
(rare in India) Being discriminated as a newcomer	Lack of confidence
(rare in India) Experience of discriminative behavior/conflicts	Limited time
The fear of becoming “visible” as one of the few female in the community	Preference to more socially interactive online activities (Lack of interest)
	Awareness - not knowing Wikipedia is editable

(From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience)

India v.s. the World

Unfortunately, most studies have been done in English Wikipedia and rarely in other smaller language communities, despite the fact that these barriers can vary a lot in different cultural, political, and economic context. In India, practitioners and researchers have identified a few potential causes of low female participation rate on Wikipedia. Contrary to what was discovered in the English Wikipedia, researchers have found that Indian female Wikipedians are generally more active and willing to participate in both online and offline interactions compared to those in the English Wikipedia community. Reports of gender discrimination cases are also fewer than those in the Western context. A possible explanation to both phenomena is that Indian Wikipedian communities are rather small and close-knitted which encourage more interpersonal networking and prevent anonymous attacks[1].

Awareness

However, recruiting and keeping female Wikipedians in India do have its own barriers to overcome. “Awareness” is discovered as one of the very primary barriers for most to start editing Wikipedia. Many did not know that the online encyclopedia is easily editable, and even more have not heard of (or are unfamiliar with the use of) Wikipedia. Outreach events are important portals for both men and women to discover and join local Wikipedia communities. And this is where weakness can be turned into strength; as most newcomers are brought in through community outreach events or personal connection, it creates a strong bond within the members and a more welcoming culture featuring collectivism rather than individualism.

On the societal level?

Although the binary categorization of inside and outside of Wikipedia is widely used, it can easily lead us to believe that we can draw a clear line in between Wikipedia and the offline world, but neglect the big picture which shapes both sides of the table. Ignoring the fundamental (societal) level of the issue and its linkage to other factors poses the risk of nurturing a symptom-fixing solution instead of a system-questioning culture.

For example, societal factors such as expectation on women’s/girls’ role and priority in her family can prevent them from the access to required facilities, internet, training, and personal leisure time for joining (or continuing editing) Wikipedia. On the psychological experience side, some women reported that they do not feel comfortable when being so “visible” online and in the community[2]; and this has a lot to do with how our online (and offline) society has been constructed and conceptualized as an “unsafe” space for women.

In fact, Wagner et al. (2015)[3] have found that a nation’s Gender Inequality Index (GII) is associated to the country’s editor gender bias on Wikipedia. Although it was a study focusing on Global North samples, the logic behind is most likely applicable in India (which ranked 130 out of 188 countries’ GII in 2014) – as the more unequally women is treated in the society, the less likely that she can reach the pre-requisite to be a Wikipedian, or even be online. For example, in India there is a much lower literacy rate for female than male – 53.7% to 75.3% as reported in the 2011 Census. At the same time, population (above the age of 25) with at least some secondary education is 56.6% for male and only 27% for female in India based on the UN Human Development Report.

All these societal factors and nuances feed into the gaps we see today – in higher academic positions, in industries, and eventually in Wikipedia. It is definitely not easy to address the macro-scale problems, but what we can do is to change it from the community level to influence individuals and the society. Hence, we are not just battling against an online phenomenon created by individuals’ unwillingness to participate, but challenging and redressing the patriarchal power while transforming the traditions of how knowledge flows. After all, bridging the gender gap should not be merely a target of “We will reach X% female participation rate by Y years,” it has much greater potential and responsibility in the long run for our generations and societies.

In the next part of the blog series, we talk about: What has been done? & What’s more to be learned?

[1] From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience and from WCI 2016 presentation:

[2] Jadine, L., (2013). Same Gaps Different Experience

[3] Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-2

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 3.)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:54:47Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries in Wikipedia gender gap narrowing on both local (India) and global scales.

This is the third (last) part of the blog series, please see Part 1 and Part 2.

Responding to the Wikipedia gender gap problem, former WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner set a target in 2011 to raise the female editor percentage to 25% by 2015. In an interview in August 2014, Jimmy Wales declared that “we’ve completely failed,” Gardner also noted that the solutions should come from local Wikipedian communities rather than from the Foundation on a macro scale.

Although the target was not met, initiatives and reforms taken places globally and locally in the past five years are not fruitless. And as mentioned in Part 2, we should not define this movement as merely pursuing a goal towards certain percentage or number. As for now dialogue has been created to include the issue into more strategic plans; collectives are established to cumulate and share resources across communities. There has been abundance of learning (and definitely much more to learn) in the issue.

What has been done?

Be it ongoing or spontaneous, international or local, there have been many interventions trying to address the gender gap in Wikipedia.

Intervention events

In July 2015, WikiProject Women in Red (WiR) was launched to “turn "redlinks (non-existing pages) into blue ones (existing pages).” The project encourages editors worldwide to create (or expand) female-related pages (biographies, women’s work, contribution, issues, etc.) that fit the notability criteria of Wikipedia. WiR also picks monthly and annual topics to feature. Currently in September, 2016, edit-a-thons on Women in nursing and women labour activists are happening online. And “Women scientists” edit-a-thon is a year-long featured topic for 2016. Although WiR is still primarily an English-WP project, some communities have expanded and localized it to local initiatives.

Coincidentally, in 2013, Indian Wikipedian communities have carried out one of the biggest and most well-known gender gap intervention – Lilavatis’ Daughters. “Lilavati’s Daughters” is a book of essay collections featuring nearly one hundred women scientists in Indian since the Victorian Era. The 2013 edit-a-thon was hence to create Wikipedia pages for these biographies in different Indian languages. Collaborating with institutions and colleges, the event was greeted with high popularity and success. Similar events were also carried out afterwards, including Indian Women in Science Edit-a-thon which has been held annually since 2014; the last event was held in July, 2016 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Another significant initiative across the globe and in Indian communities is the annual Wikiwomen’s history month in March along with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8^th. The initiative started in 2012, edit-a-thons, photo-thons (updating photos onto Wikimedia Commons), and meetups have been held to raise the awareness of the gender gap online, create female-related content available on Wikipedia, and to strengthen the bonding between local Wikiwomen.

Recently, Wikimedia Foundation collaborated with the United Nations to launch the one-day Her Story project Edit-a-thon on August 12^th, 2016 to celebrate International Youth Day globally. Cities in India like Chennai and Delhi also held local edit-a-thons on the day of in response to the event. With the opportunity to work alongside the UN, it is a good sign that the Wikipedia gender gap issue is drawing global attention, not just in the Wikipedian community level, but also in global institution level.

Collaborative

The Wikiwomen’s Collaborative is a global platform for female Wikipedians to share projects, insights, and support. The Collaborative also encourages participants to write blog post on the Wikiwomen’s Blog to spread more words about the gender gap issue and initiatives. A Gender Gap Task Force (GGTF) was founded in 2013 aiming to challenge the patriarchal culture of knowledge and Wikipedia. GGTF tries to fix the encyclopedia’s imbalance power structure by initiating discussion and examination on its policies and editor interaction. It has also been a place to cumulate research studies and resources on the gender gap topic. A (global) gender gap mailing list is also created to spread the news and words with more communities.

Improvement in the Interface

Aside from events and collectives organized by respective communities, the Wikipedia platform itself has also been under constant transition in the last few years, trying to create a friendlier place for women and newcomers.

Since June 2012, the new prototype Visual Editor has become available in more and more language versions of Wikimedia projects – including most Indian languages. Visual Editor enables editor to contribute without learning the Wiki markups, as it creates the “write-as-how-you-will-see-it” feature requiring only basic typing skills. Nevertheless, Visual Editor does have several limitations comparing to the traditional edit source option, including slower speed, unavailable in talk and discussion namespaces, limited template editing options, and so on. While a research in 2013 on Visual Editor’s use in English Wikipedia showed low effectiveness of the new feature in attracting and encouraging new editors, more research should also be done in the non-English (especially Global South) context. Online tutorial resources about editing are also becoming available in Indian communities.

Traditional Wiki markup editing screenshot

Visual Editor screenshot

On the other hand, mobile apps of Wikipedia has been improved in its editing function. Although the apps are still in constant development to make the function smoother and easier for mobile users, it is a great breakthrough for those who do not have personal computers to contribute in small ways (or even in great ways – some have created pages and denied the statement that mobile editing is impractical).

What’s more to be learned?

There is no denying that our Indian language communities have been putting efforts to highlight and address the gender gap issue on Wikipedia. The Wikiconference India 2016 in August also had a panel responding to this topic where panelists from both outreach and research threads proposed localized perspective and strategies to fix the problem.

However, there are still much more to be learned. First of all, we need a more organized feedback loop (a cycle of planning-executing-evaluating-sharing learning) for local interventions to learn from our success and mistakes. Secondly, the issue has to become more “public” in a sense that we are not just promoting within our own circles. Awareness-building through media coverage and institutional collaboration can bring in greater public opinions and volunteers to help the online encyclopedia become a more inclusive place. The third point is a change of mindset: women's feeling and experience should be put forward into the central of our initiatives and interventions.

“We made it clear that we were focusing on the (female) participants and their experience, the content they created online are of course important too, but that’s just the by-product.” -Wikiconference Indian 2016 Gender Gap panel presenter

In other words, as we are engaging more and more women, the focus should not be numbers but the humans. At the same time, we should always encourage women to stand out and speak out. As mentioned in the previous part, gender discrimination cases have not yet been reported in our communities, but we also have to ensure if it does happen both the female editors and the community should have a certain level of awareness (what constitutes harassment/discrimination/sexism; when and how to call out) and a report and support mechanism to the problem.

The road to a real equalized knowledge system is not easy. As many have noticed and pointed out “This is not just a Wikipedia problem!” Indeed, similar gender imbalance exists in our academies, IT industries, free and open-source software (FOSS) workplace, to name a few. Nonetheless, with the flexibility and the strong bond that Indian Wikipedian communities possess, we can be one of the pioneers in positive changes. After all, the knowledge created and action taken today will shape what our tomorrow can be like.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-3