Training students to close the Wikipedia gender gap

With over 14 billion views each month, Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. English language Wikipedia counts almost 6.5 million pages that are constantly being improved by volunteer editors worldwide. While anyone can edit Wikipedia, only about 20% of editors self-identify as female. Who edits Wikipedia matters: articles related to topics traditionally considered of interest to women are less well-covered and only about 18.5% of biographies are about women. In recent years, concerted efforts have been successful at reducing the so-called "Wikipedia gender gap," but change is slow occurring due to a complex interplay of factors, including technological barriers, time commitment, and confrontational editing environments. Digital native, enthusiastic, and socially engaged undergraduate students have the potential of becoming the next generation of Wikipedia editors. Training students to edit Wikipedia and hosting Edit-a-thons empowers them to take part in this form of science activism. In this talk, I will discuss initiatives focused on reducing the Wikipedia gender gap developed at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in collaboration with the Gordon Library on campus.