Why don't we see the women who are on Wikipedia?

By Isa Zapico [Zapipedia]

An analysis of the 25 most visited articles on Spanish Wikipedia during 2023 suggests that the gender gap in the free encyclopedia does not only affect content, but also results in lower visibility of articles related to women.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is one of the most consulted pages in the world. Every month, more than 1.5 billion unique devices access it. Among the language versions, Wikipedia in English, an encyclopedia created and consulted, not only from Spain but by the entire Spanish-speaking community, about 600 million people worldwide are positioned as the 4th most visited wiki.

In Wikiesfera we have been since 2015 working to make the representation of information in this encyclopedia as equitable as possible. And following in the wake of the article published by the Wikimedia Foundation about the 25 most visited articles on Wikipedia in English, we wanted to know which contents are the most visited in Wikipedia in Spanish.

In particular, we wanted to check if, as with the content available on Wikipedia (with only one 22% of women's biographies) there is some gender bias in consultations that this encyclopedia is made and what are the reasons for this to happen.

To do this, we have made a review of the most visited articles on Spanish Wikipedia in 2023, and the list is the most revealing.

> Cleopatra

Although it may seem surprising, Cleopatra y Cleopatra I of Egypt are the most visited pages of the wiki in Spanish because a virtual assistant that, in order to be configured, asks users to say "Show Cleopatra on Wikipedia".

> Social networks

After Cleopatra, the most visited article on Wikipedia in Spanish is that of YouTube, which received more than 8 million visits in 2023. But did the people who came to that page really seek to know the encyclopedic information around this video platform or, on the contrary, did they intend to reach YouTube itself?

The same goes for other similar pages, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter o WhatsApp, which are positioned as some of the most visited pages on Wikipedia in Spanish.

> Top 3

If we remove from the list the aforementioned results that seem not to come from organic searches (that is, those related to social networks or Cleopatra), we find that the most searched articles in 2023 on Spanish Wikipedia were:

  1. Periodic table of elements, with almost 6 million views. This result is quite striking, and possibly because this article is used as an educational resource.
  2. ChatGPT. It was also the most visited article on Wikipedia in English. It seems that artificial intelligence has aroused the curiosity of reading people.
  3. Lionel Messi. A footballer could not miss in the list of the most read articles.

> Biographies of women?

If we delve a little deeper into the list, we find more biographies among the most consulted articles on the Spanish Wikipedia, although only one of them belongs to a woman:

We have to go further down the list to find the names of other women among the most visited articles on Wikipedia in Spanish: Taylor Swift is at number 26 of the ranking and the queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at number 37. In fact, these three women are the only ones to appear in the top 50 results. If we expand the search and look at the 100 most viewed pages in 2023, we will see that only the biographies of 4 other women are found: Margot Robbie (No. 77), Karol G (No 79), Frida Kalho (No. 90) and Marie Curie (No. 100).

> Men's football

It is striking the number of articles (10) related to the universe of men's football that appear in the list of the 25 most visited articles on Wikipedia in Spanish. In addition to the players previously mentioned in this post (Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo), we find articles such as:

According to Wikimedia Foundation data, it is likely that many of the visits to these entries come from users who access Wikipedia to consult the latest results of their teams or competitions.

In any case, it is curious that in the year of #It's over, of the 100 most visited articles on Wikipedia in Spanish, only one of them is related to women's football: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup (occupying position 50).

> Current affairs and geography

Current issues in 2023 and geography also marked the searches that were carried out on Spanish Wikipedia during the past year. For example, the Argentine elections and film premieres:

Looks like Barbie (film), the other contender in the Barbenheimer, led to fewer searches since it does not appear in the list until position 59 and its protagonist, Margot Robbie, until 77.

> Why is there also a gender gap in queries to Wikipedia in Spanish?

In view of these results, where articles about or related to women are almost non-existent among the 25 most visited (and even among the top 100), from Wikisphere we ask ourselves several questions to try to understand the reasons for this happening, while thinking about possible ways to improve (also) the visibility of women on Wikipedia.

>> Who reads Wikipedia? This gender inequality of the most-visited articles in the free encyclopedia may be related to the fact that the 60% of people who read Wikipedia in Spanish identify as men. In the case of other Wikipedias, the figure exceeds 70%. But aren't men really interested in women's content?

>> Why don't women read Wikipedia? Perhaps because of a question of digital divide? Or simply because the content offered by Wikipedia does not interest them? We know that only the 22nd% of the biographies are about women and that only the 13th% of the people who edit Wikipedia identify themselves as women. Could this situation mean that women who read Wikipedia do not feel represented in the content that the encyclopedia offers and, therefore, look for content on other platforms?

>> Are there less quality (wikipedic) articles about women? From a formal point of view, there are several parameters that define whether a Wikipedia article has higher or lower quality, such as the number of reliable sources that support its content, for example. Research suggests that women's biographies on Wikipedia are often built with better quality than men's. However, it seems that higher quality does not translate into greater visibility.

>> Are women's biographies and content on Wikipedia less visible? If we continue to observe the technical or formal issues of the articles, we can point out several problems within Wikipedia itself that may influence its lower visibility:

  • On Wikipedia, they are known as orphaned items those that are not linked from other articles. According to one Wikimedia Foundation Research, in the case of women's biographies, it has been observed that women tend to be orphans to a greater extent. This potentially reduces your visibility, since for every link you point to an article from another, Views are increased by 10%.
  • It is important to mention that, in order for an article to occupy the cover of Wikipedia, it must have the consideration of Good article o Featured article, two recognitions granted by the community of editors to those articles that meet certain requirements. And, although as we have mentioned the biographies of women in Wikipedia are usually better built than those of men, everything seems to indicate that they do not achieve this denomination to the same extent. Analyzing the reasons that this is so, probably gave for another article.

As we have been able to observe, it seems that the depth of the gender gap in Wikipedia reaches dimensions that go beyond the representation of women both in the content itself and among the people responsible for its creation, but also affects its visibility. Therefore, we believe that it is necessary to analyze in greater detail the reasons why this happens to, together, find and implement strategies of visibility and positioning of content in Wikipedia with a gender perspective.

Meanwhile, from Wikisphere We will continue to insist on the work we have been doing since 2015. Caring and creating a feminist community of publishers engaged in creating gender-responsive content on Wikipedia to close knowledge gaps.

#TogetherWe'reMoreVisible