A recent survey in India led by the Health Ministry, highlights a huge gap between men and women using the internet. Only 33 per cent of women are online, compared to 57 per cent of men. Another study in January 2023 found that 51 per cent of Snapchat users worldwide are women, showing a significant female presence on social media.
Addressing The Wikipedia Gap
Prominent websites like Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopedia, are actively addressing gender gaps through initiatives and community-building exercises focused on women. They're running projects and activities to involve more women. Even though women are doing well as social media content creators, especially in rural India, they are still not as visible online as men. This issue also extends to platforms like Wikipedia.
Surprisingly, even though the internet has been around for nearly 40 years, most of the content online is still male-centric. There's a lack of information about women across areas like news, public records, science, and social media. This gender disparity is evident on English Wikipedia, as highlighted by a series of surveys in 2019, which revealed that around two-thirds of Wikipedia readers are men, generating approximately 72 per cent of page views.
Only around 20 per cent or six million biographies on English Wikipedia are about women. Despite a growth of 25 per cent in articles about women since 2014, other user-generated content platforms are doing better. Wikipedia has strict rules, requiring information to come from trustworthy sources, which makes it challenging when there are fewer sources about women.
Need For Inclusion
With over 15 billion readers every month, Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites globally. To close the gender gap on this platform, we need more women to contribute and more content about women.
The Wikimedia movement, made up of volunteers and the Wikimedia Foundation, is actively working to involve more women and improve content around women. A recent event called WikiWomenCamp in India brought together over 100 women contributors from 30 countries. This event highlighted a shared commitment to making Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects more equal for everyone.
