Gender statistics on the Internet are thought provoking, including Pew Research’s report that 75% of women and 63% of men use Social Media. Also Pew reported 67% of “online American adults are Facebook users, making Facebook the dominant social networking site” in the US. Likely no surprise to anyone.
Even though women predominate in Social Media, in 2012 Wikipedia estimated that about 10% of postings were made by women. It seems odd that only 10% of posting on Wikipedia are made by women considering the size and scope of Wikipedia, which as of February 2013 “accounts for 24 million articles, over 4.1 million in the English Wikipedia, …written collaboratively by volunteers around the world.”
After conducting a survey in 2011 about Wikipedia posting, Wikipedia express a desire to have more women to post:
Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors… It is a strategic priority to address this imbalance. The survey did find that the total percent of women Wikipedia editors has increased somewhat in the last few years, but we still have a lot of ground to over. We can attract women editors partly by introducing tools and features that make editing simple for everyone.
There must be a reason that only 10% of women post on Wikipedia, and determining why will likely provide interesting social information.