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[theunofficialguidetobeingawoman]

Have you ever thought about gender disparity on Wikipedia? I was unaware of the lack of female presence on WP because I never really thought about it. However, I was recently introduced to this article discussing a Nobel Prize winner and how it took her a Nobel Prize to gain a WP entry despite the fact that her male colleagues already had articles. I started to look things up further and noticed that many contributors are male. In fact under 20% of WP’s editors are women and there is a void when it comes to entries about women. For example, the “A Feminist Dictionary” author, Cheris Kramarae has a short entry about her, yet her co-author Paula A. Treichler does not have one.

By encouraging more women to contribute to Wikipedia we can make sure that women’s experiences are also accounted for and decrease the gender gap. Perhaps it is time to change the stigma around WP, as a source for research. Women deserve just as much space on the encyclopedia as men do.