Hi Marielle, Thanks for your comments, and for pointing out that one of the more detailed reports from the UNU survey, i.e.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130129042156/http://www.wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Age_Gender_30March%202010-FINAL-3.pdf did break down the number of contributors with children according to gender (I took my figures from the overview). I'll add a corresponding correction to our post later. However, the figure given there, 13.7%, is not very different from the overall average of 14.72%. In fact, it is *lower*, and thus using the combined figure I would actually have slightly *overestimated* the percentage of mothers. The source for the 8.5% figure is of course linked in the article. It is the Wikimedia Foundation's own April 2011 survey. The link is https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.pdf&page=3 The quote ("Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors. The survey provided an even starker view of this than previous studies (only 8.5% of editors are women).") was a verbatim from page 3 of the WMF report. I will have to look into Hill & Shaw, but would note that the Wikimedia Foundation itself reported the figures from the UNU survey as they stood (see e.g. p. 8 of the February 2011 Strategic Plan: "According to the study, over 86% of contributors were male"). Best, Andreas On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Marielle Volz <marielle.v...@gmail.com> wrote: > The math behind that little statistic was so terrible I had to write a > blog post about it. > > > http://blog.mvolz.com/2014/08/what-percentage-of-wikipedia-editors-are-mums/ > > First off, in their blog post, Andreas & Collida multiply the > percentage of contributor respondents who were women (12.64%) by the > percentage of all respondents (contributor and reader, male and > female) who were parents- 14.72%- while seemingly missing that the > study in fact provided a breakdown of this: 13.7% of all female > respondents were parents. (15.1% of the male respondents were). > > Secondly, Andreas & Collida cherry pick a lower bound number for women > contributors (8.5%) (source unkown) and presented the number from the > survey (12.64%) as an upper bound. A literature search gave me an > upper bound of 16.1% from Hill & Shaw. > > Furthermore, the source Andreas & Collida used contained biased > statistics. The original WMF/UNU-MERIT report had no methods section > and didn’t control for sampling bias. The Hill & Shaw paper controls > for sample bias based on a survey by Pew, which used better sampling > methods. > > Hill & Shaw tried to control for the survey’s selection bias and found > that they “estimate that females, married people, and individuals with > children were underrepresented in the WMF/UNU-MERIT sample while > immigrants and students were overrepresented.” > > This means that the two statistics Andreas & Collida chose to multiply > together; female editors/contributors and males and females with > children- were *both* underestimates in the WMF/UNU-MERIT survey. > > Hill & Shaw provide the adjusted numbers for these accordingly; they > estimate that 16.1% of contributors (as opposed to 12.64%) are female, > and that 25.3% have children. We can perform a similar analysis as > Andreas & Collida using those adjusted numbers by multiplying them, a > result of about 4.1%- more than double their highest estimate. > > Of course, this number is also flawed; we don’t have the actual > breakdown of what percentage of female contributors have children, and > instead are multiplying aggregate numbers. A better estimate could be > obtained by redoing Hill & Shaw‘s analysis on the raw dataset. > > On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 9:14 PM, Tim Davenport <shoehu...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > There is a new blog post up on Wikipedia-criticism site Wikipediocracy > that > > should be of interest to this list. > > > > Andreas Kolbe with Nathalie Collida, "Why Women Have No Time For > Wikipedia: > > Thoughts on the Online Encyclopedia's Gender Imbalance." > > > > > http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/08/26/why-women-have-no-time-for-wikipedia/ > > > > One interesting assertion made by the authors in their lengthy essay is > that > > fewer than 1 in 50 WP contributors is a mother: > > > > "It is sometimes argued that women simply have less time to contribute to > > Wikipedia, due to family commitments. This is a fallacy. Firstly, the > United > > Nations University survey found that only 33.29% of respondents had a > > partner, and only 14.72% had children. The difference between readers and > > contributors was negligible here, and the survey report did not indicate > any > > difference in these percentages for male and female respondents. It is > > patently obvious that girls and women in the age groups that are most > > strongly represented in Wikipedia’s demographics typically do not yet > have > > families of their own. Their lack of participation is unrelated to their > > being bogged down by family responsibilities. > > > > "Of course, these figures also tell us something else: if only 14.72% of > > contributors have children, and the percentage of female contributors > lies > > somewhere between 8.5% and 12.64%, then it looks like only 1.25%–1.86% of > > Wikipedia contributors are mothers. > > > > "That is less than 1 in 50." > > > > > > Tim Davenport > > "Carrite" on WP /// "Randy from Boise" on WPO > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Gendergap mailing list > > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap > > > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap >
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