Paper — Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica

Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica

Is there a bias in the against women’s representation in Wikipedia biographies? Thousands of biographical subjects, from six sources, are compared against the English-language Wikipedia and the online Encyclopædia Britannica with respect to coverage, gender representation, and article length. We conclude that Wikipedia provides better coverage and longer articles, that Wikipedia typically has more articles on women than Britannica in absolute terms, but Wikipedia articles on women are more likely to be missing than articles on men relative to Britannica. For both reference works, article length did not consistently differ by gender.

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Source: International Journal of Communications

See Also: “New Full Text Research Paper: “WP: Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance”
New research from the U. of Minnesota.

Computer science researchers in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering are leading a team that has confirmed a substantial gender gap among editors of Wikipedia and a corresponding gender-oriented disparity in the content. The team’s research will be presented at the 2011 WikiSym conference, the seventh annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, in California this fall.

See Also: “Wikipedia says it’s losing contributors”

See Also: Now Available: Results From 2011 Wikipedia Editor Survey

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