Wikipedia is ‘very masculine,’ so feminists pledge to fix it
Sarah Stierch, a Wikipedia contributor and researcher for the Wikimedia Foundation, said the problem isn’t just that most Wikipedia user are male. The layout of the website is itself “very masculine,” she said.
“It’s aesthetically very masculine in its design,” said Stierch in a statement to The Daily Dot, also noting that, “The average Wikipedia editor is a well-educated white male. Well-educated white males have been writing history and the story of the world since ancient times.”
To fix this, feminists at colleges around the country are launching another ‘Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon.’ Next week, feminists are encouraged to change rewrite the online encyclopedia to make it less masculine, according to Campus Reform.
The event is a follow-up to last year’s similar edit-a-thon, when feminist sympathizers were called to edit “feminist thought” into Wikipedia articles.
“It’s not like my life passion to make Wikipedia feminist, but it’s been really surprising, there’s this whole underground world that I wasn’t aware of of people who are dedicated to editing Wikipedia,” said Krystal South, an event organizer, in a statement to Bitch Magazine. “The beauty of Wikipedia is it’s a public institution, people have the ability to go change it.”
