This document summarizes lessons learned about addressing the gender gap in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in the global south. Some of the key challenges identified include a lack of region-specific or language-specific data, denial that a gender gap exists by some community members, women feeling a lack of gender competence and reluctance to acknowledge issues, unconscious sexism, a lack of female role models, and an absence of codes of conduct to encourage women's participation and make them feel welcome.

1. Gender gap in the global south:
Lessons from policy and outreach
Rohini Lakshané
Wikimania 2016, Esino Lario
rohini@riseup.net
Twitter: @aldebaran14
CC-BY-SA 4.0

2. This is an attempt to share significant lessons I
have gathered as the Chairperson of the
Gender gap Special Interest Group at
Wikimedia (India) as well as a long-time
volunteer of the Wikimedia movement.

3. Stumbling blocks

Lack of data specific to region or language.

UNU-MERIT survey (2010)

WMF Women & Wikimedia Survey (2011)

Clubhouse study (2011)

MIT/NU survey (2013)
-- Source: Charting Diversity, Wikimedia
Deutschland

4. “Gender gap does not exist”

“Maybe women are not interested in editing.”

“It’s not that bad a problem.”
Refusal to acknowledge the existence of gender
gap or its magnitude was more pronounced in
communities with skewed gender ratios offline.

5. Perceived lack of gender
competance by women
Women frontrunners in their community refuse to
acknowledge the gender gap for fear of losing
‘respect’ or leadership position in the community.
Women go quiet in mixed gender trainings even if
they freely mingle with the same group in social
settings.

6. The ‘Good’ Men
“I am a feminist; I let my wife go to work.”

Some Wikimedians may not be consciously and
forthright sexist, but like in the real world, there
is deep-seated, sub-conscious sexism, which
leads them to oppose women (or their work).

Ingrained and invisibilised nature of sexism
gives acceptability to sexism.

7. 
Women-only spaces either are for girl gangs
who lack seriousness or are unearned
privileges.

Reservations, say, in scholarships for women
are not seen as ways of offsetting gender
imbalance but as privileges (denied to men).

8. Not enough female role models women can
identify with.

9. No Code of Conduct

There are no policy or guidelines for encouraging the
participation of women and making them feel
welcome both online as well as at events such as
trainings and conferences.

Even if such policies were drawn up, their
enforcement and implementation need to have teeth.
WikiConference India CoC:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_
2016/Code_of_Conduct

10. In small communities, everyone knows
everyone else, irrespective of whether their
handles reveal their real-life identities, which
makes women fear being targetted and makes
then more susceptible to harassment.

11. Gracie