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Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2013/Documentation/Netha Hussein Diversifying Inda through outreach among women

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Session: Netha Hussain // Diversifying India through outreach among women

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Abstract

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Wikimedia’s gender gap is more pronounced in Indian Wikimedia Community where only 3% of the participants of the editor survey (2011) were female as opposed to 9% globally. The presentation will focus on the context-specific barriers and challenges faced by Indian women in editing Wikipedia and how the Wikimedia community in India has attempted to bridge the gender gap. It will focus on the designs of outreach programs conducted in India for targeting different groups of population, and the cultural aspects that are to be addressed while conducting outreach.

Starting point / Insights

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  • Start with statistics: How many people in India access the internet? How many women?
  • Comscore says India is the world's third largest internet population -> overtakes Japan - great potential (editors ecetera)
  • Second fastest growing Inet population, after Brazil
  • Only 40% are women: 10% gap, which means that there is an access gap.
  • 24 million Indian women log in every day. Mostly checking mail, interacting on social networks, shopping online. Lack of awareness of projects like Wikipedia.
  • Internet penetration map shows that India only has 12.6% access. 164th in the world.
  • Growth means that India will later overtake some of the leading countries.

Challenges

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Gender gap: Of people who identified their gender in a survey, 90% are male, 9% female, 1% transgender. 3% of edits come from India. US has 14% of edits by women, but India only has 3% (2011 data) - enormous gender gap. Why the gender gap? In editing events, ask new users "why not yet"?

  • Awareness: Didn't know they could edit it (expertise, permission?)
  • Time: busy with housekeeping, child-rearing, office work, etc. Too little leisure time.
  • Language: Don't know English. Only affluent people know English, many others don't know that there are versions in their language as well
  • Technology: Feel that they don't have the required expertise to edit Wikipedia. (more a perception than reality). Don't know how to type in their own language (on Latin keyboard).
  • Self-confidence: Feel that working on computers is "man's work" - lack of confidence.
  • Accessibility: Don't have access to internet

Video: Poongothai Balasubramaniam: Maths teacher. Sons are grown up, so now free from responsibility now: she has time to edit.

Barriers inside and outside Wikipedia (see presentation for list)

Sue Gardner wrote in 2009 on why women don't edit. Review from Indian perspective:

  • in India, user-unfriendly interface is not seen as a problem - the Indian women internalise this "it's my fault that I can't do it"
  • Fighty culture: Not so much of a problem - the Indian wikimedians know each other (did I capture that correctly?)
  • (competitive culture can be recognized as problematic)

What we did: [see presentation for full list]

  • Edit-a-thons around gender-relevant days, etc.
  • Profiles of Women editors (11 so far)
  • Social media pages, blog posts
  • Wikipedia Zero
  • Offline:Special Interest Group of WMIN for Gender Diversity, workshops and participation at WikiConference India
  • Good brainstorming and free communication in offline discussions.

Solutions: Wikipedia Zero, Visual editor, etc. [See presentation]

Ideas

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Online:

  • Create a portal on WIkimedia India for gathering resources for women editors
  • Regular online meetups and monthly edit-a-thons
  • Gendergap India mailing list

Offline:

  • Workshops, WikiWomen meetups
  • Host international womens conference
  • Tutorial videos

Questions / Next steps recommendations

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Q: Not aware of many regular editathons? A: Future plans is to have regular editathons. Until now, only isolated (e.g. during Women's Day / Month) Women Scientists, Create a page on en-wiki or Meta, write down objective Response: The regular ones? A: Many contributors only arrive for one, and not the next, so consistent follow-up is important to get people into the Wikipedia ecosystem; hope that regular editathons will help for this.

Q: Tools to track things like numbers of edits post-editathon? A: As of now, have WikiMetrics, trying to use it. Got info from Program Eval and Design team on how to use. Malayalam language: Will get school students to write articles, want to use WikiMetrics for that. So far just using numbers of sign-ups, number of articles created or expanded. Wikimetrics should help.

Q: Women participating in editathons: themes? A: Workshops: edit what you want. Editathons: locked to theme. Not enough volunteers from all Indian languages. Usually about 5 languages represented. Response: Is it maybe focussed too broadly? A: In workshops you have so many newbies, so better to let them write what they want, but in editathons, apart from increasing participation, want to improve content, and therefore focus on topic. Response: Microcontributions are related to ability to make it easier for women to participate. [not quite clear on exactly what the relationship is here

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