Tag Archives: Women

Percentage of men and women on different social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, …)

Lots of debate arose around the fact almost 87% of Wikipedia editors are male. This is not necessarily true since the survey on which this “fact” is based has some biases (for example, people self-elected to answer).
However, a query run on the Wikipedia database showed that more than 83% self-identified as male.
While these numbers are not 100% representative of reality, it is probably true that most of editors are male. This is acknowledged also on a Wikipedia page about the systemic bias of Wikipedia (yes, I know this very page has been written by people whose bias we are trying to interpret but, going to the extremes, it’s turtles all the way down ;)

So the question could be: what is the ratio male/female on other social networking sites?

Just, for comparative reasons (and a bit for fun too), I compiled the following table based on the Social Network Analysis Report by Ignite Social Media. The table is sorted so that first lines are sites in which there are relatively more females than males. I’m not familiar with all the sites but it seems that sites more populated by women are the very social and playful (such as Haboo, Bebo, Myspace, Xanga, Facebook). On the other side of the spectrum there are sites populated most by males: sites showing what’s interesting right now thanks to social bookmarking such as Reddit, Digg, Identi.ca, and “professional” network sites such as Linkedin and Plaxo.
This table is not “scientific” in any way as well (for instance, percentages in the report are gathered from Google Ad Planner and Google Insights for Search).
Consider the following table just as more food for thought. Does it confirm your intuitions? Or should I say prejudices? ;)

  Social network site Percentage of females
Habbo 66%
Bebo 62%
Myspace 62%
Xanga 62%
Facebook 55%
Ning 55%
Hi5 52%
Meetup 52%
Tribe 52%
Twitter 52%
Yelp 52%
Flixster 50%
Foursquare 50%
Friendster 50%
Flickr 48%
Last.fm 48%
Livejournal 48%
Metafilter 48%
Multiply 48%
Plaxo 45%
Stumbleupon 45%
Badoo 43%
Mixx 43%
Linkedin 40%
Netlog 40%
Newsvine 40%
Plurk 40%
Identi.ca 34%
Digg 32%
Indianpad 24%
Reddit 24%

Credits: Icons by socialshift, elegantthemes and WpZoom.

Percentage of men and women on different Wikipedias

Few days ago there was an interesting article on NYTimes about the small percentage of women on Wikipedia.
Today on the gendergap mailing list at wikipedia there is a very interesting ongoing discussion. Some preliminary statistics from the discussion are:

Wikipedia in specific language Number of users who specified gender in preferences Percentage of users who specified gender in preferences How many men How many women Percentage of women
English
http://en.wikipedia.org
13959842 2.01% 233312 46973 16.76%
German
http://de.wikipedia.org
1167708 3.47% 35726 4800 11.84%
French
http://fr.wikipedia.org
998668 2.16% 18556 3054 14.13%
Serbian
http://sr.wikipedia.org
78180 2.66% 1666 414 19.90%
Russian
http://ru.wikipedia.org
620393 16.80% 80491 23750 22.78%
Polish
http://pl.wikipedia.org
414511 3.64% 12106 2999 19.85%
Dutch
http://nl.wikipedia.org
368815 2.92% 8977 1781 16.56%
Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org
1464442 2.26% 27980 5070 15.34%

Interesting to note how on Russian Wikipedia, users tend to express their gender much more (16.80%!). Do you have ideas if (1) this is a cultural issue specific of Russians, (2) it depends on the practices of the specific Wikipedia in Russian or (3) it depends on the user interface, for example it might be that when you register you are redirect to an HTML page in which you can specify also your gender?
Also interesting is the fact that in this Wikipedia the percentage of women is the highest (22.78%). Probably the reason is that in a place in which gender is more represented, it is more normal for women to represent it as well. While where gender it is not represent, it is in general foolish for women to explicitly say “Hey, I’m female!” in order not to attract (additional) unwanted messages. Or put in other terms, OMG Girlz Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1.


Img by nojhan, under Creative Commons

The Global Gender Gap Report 2007. Italy? 84th out of 128

The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 is out.
Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the rankings in the latest Global Gender Gap Report. The Report covers a total of 128 countries.
Ah yes, you are wondering about Italy? Why really wondering? Anything else to do? Uhm, ok here is the raw reality: Italy is 84th out of 128.
Our cousins of Spain are 10th (!), Latvia is in position 13 and Lithuania 14. Moldova is 21, Cuba is 22, Colombia is 24, Bulgaria is 25, Lesotho is 26, Namibia is 29, Tanzania is 34, Vietnam is 42, Romania is 47, Uganda is 50, Botswana is 53, Albania is 66, China is 73
Did I say that if you scroll down down in the list you find Italy in position 84?
So why cannot an NGO of Lesotho comes in Italy to help us with an international cooperation project about gender issues?