According to the 2012 WMF survey, only 3% of Wikipedia editors from India were women https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-to-be-men/. However, as a Cisco forecast in 2017 suggested, internet penetration in India is projected to increase sharply by 2021, from 28% to 59% of the population; which means that more women are likely to access to the internet and subsequently to Wikipedia https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/internet-users-in-india-to-double-by-2021-says-cisco-4696154/. In this context, it is even more important to understand the motives for Indian women to contribute to Wikipedia, the barriers faced by them and the consequences thereof. This talk intends to present a preliminary ethnographic study addressing the issue of gender gap, featuring narratives of Wikipedians from India (with focus on women contributors). The aim of this study is to trace their motivations for contributing to Wikipedia, barriers to their participation and measures taken (and suggested) for bridging the gender gap. Our academic work is intended as a pilot study on gender mapping in the Indian context, we employed qualitative methods for data collection and used a semi-structured questionnaire for the interviews. Respondents were chosen from various academic backgrounds and age groups, different regions of India, contributing to different language versions, active Wikipedians as well as ones who have stopped contributing. At this stage, we have carried out seventeen interviews to make sense of the motivations to contribute, as well as to understand their perceptions of gender bias on Indian Wikipedia space. Our findings relate strongly to the issues that emerged from the 2017 gender mapping study on Wikimedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_Diversity_Mapping and also point out unique Indian problems which create barriers for women’s participation, and what is being done (and can be done) to bridge these gaps.
Speakers: Anwesha Chakraborthy Netha Hussain