Gender bias on Wikipedia

Gender bias on Wikipedia is the phenomenon that men are more likely than women to be volunteer contributors and article subjects of Wikipedia (although the English Wikipedia has almost 400,000 encyclopedic biographies about women, men have about four times as many),^[a] as well as the lesser coverage on Wikipedia of topics primarily of interest to women.^[5][6]

In a 2018 survey covering 12 language versions of Wikipedia and some other Wikimedia Foundation projects, 90% of 3,734 respondents reported their gender as male, 8.8% as female, and 1% as other; among contributors to the English Wikipedia, 84.7% identified as male, 13.6% as female, and 1.7% as other (total of 88 respondents).^[7] In 2019, Katherine Maher, then CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, said her team's working assumption was that women make up 15–20% of total contributors.^[8]

A 2021 study found that, in April 2017, 41% of biographies nominated for deletion were women despite only 17% of published biographies being women.^[9] The visibility and reachability of women on Wikipedia is limited, with a 2015 report finding that female pages generally "tend to be more linked to men".^{[10][needs update]} Language that is considered sexist, loaded, or otherwise gendered has been identified in articles about women.^[6] Gender bias features among the most frequent criticisms of Wikipedia, sometimes as part of a more general criticism about systemic bias in Wikipedia.

In 2015, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that the encyclopedia had failed to reach its goal to retain 25% female editorship.^[5] Programs such as edit-a-thons and Women in Red have been developed to encourage female editors and increase the coverage of women's topics.^[11][12]

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