The Heart Work of Wikipedia: Gendered, Emotional Labor in the World's Largest Online Encyclopedia

This note explores the issue of women's participation in Wikipedia through the lens of emotional labor. Using a grounded theory approach, we detail the kinds of tasks women Wikipedians choose to do and explore why they choose the work they do. We also explore the emotional costs of their labor and their strategies for coping. Our analysis of 20 interviews leads us to posit that the gendered and emotional labor required of many women to participate in Wikipedia's production renders it, problematically, a space of conflicting public and private spheres, motivated by antithetical open and closed values. In addition to other contributions, we believe this insight sheds light on some of the complex dynamics behind Wikipedia's observed gender gap.

[1]  A. Hochschild.  Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure , 1979, American Journal of Sociology.

[2]  Aniket Kittur,et al.  He says, she says: conflict and coordination in Wikipedia , 2007, CHI.

[3]  José van Dijck,et al.  Wisdom of the crowd or technicity of content? Wikipedia as a sociotechnical system , 2010, New Media Soc..

[4]  Aaron Halfaker,et al.  Snuggle: designing for efficient socialization and ideological critique , 2014, CHI.

[5]  Oded Nov,et al.  Gender differences in Wikipedia editing , 2011, Int. Sym. Wikis.

[6]  Aniket Kittur,et al.  Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in wikipedia: quality through coordination , 2008, CSCW.

[7]  Linda Steiner,et al.  (Re)triggering Backlash: Responses to News About Wikipedia’s Gender Gap , 2013 .

[8]  Fabian Flöck,et al.  Towards a diversity-minded Wikipedia , 2011, WebSci '11.

[9]  Benjamin Collier,et al.  Conflict, criticism, or confidence: an empirical examination of the gender gap in wikipedia contributions , 2012, CSCW.

[10]  Maja van der Velden,et al.  Decentering Design: Wikipedia and Indigenous Knowledge , 2013, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[11]  Shaowen Bardzell,et al.  Towards a feminist HCI methodology: social science, feminism, and HCI , 2011, CHI.

[12]  Konstantin Aal,et al.  Sewing interest in E-textiles: analyzing making from a gendered perspective , 2014, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[13]  Oded Nov,et al.  What motivates Wikipedians? , 2007, CACM.

[14]  John Riedl,et al.  WP:clubhouse?: an exploration of Wikipedia's gender imbalance , 2011, Int. Sym. Wikis.

[15]  Aaron D. Shaw,et al.  The Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with Propensity Score Estimation , 2013, PloS one.

[16]  Aaron Halfaker,et al.  Wikipedians are born, not made: a study of power editors on Wikipedia , 2009, GROUP.

[17]  David Laniado,et al.  Emotions under Discussion: Gender, Status and Communication in Online Collaboration , 2014, PloS one.

[18]  Shaowen Bardzell,et al.  Feminist HCI: taking stock and outlining an agenda for design , 2010, CHI.

[19]  Gopinaath Kannabiran.  Ecofeminism and sustainable HCI , 2014, DIS Companion '14.