A Washington Post author criticized Wikipedia for the lack of entries citing women in academia, and proposes expanding coverage of women in political articles.
From Breitbart:
Part of why Baltz claims this is a problem is the fact studies suggest Wikipedia can shape scientific literature. He claims groups “underrepresented in academia tend to be missing at an even higher rate on Wikipedia” and together this means “Wikipedia does not just passively reflect biases. It amplifies and reinforces them.” Baltz further criticizes Wikipedia claiming only 20 percent of political scientists with articles are women when 30 percent of political scientists are reportedly women. He raises a similar issue with nearly half of articles on political scientists being Americans.
But here’s more: The author says he has been spending 2020 editing Wikipedia to “expand articles about female political scientists…” What it actually sounds like is that he’s mad that society hasn’t produced enough women scholars for his liking.
Nevermind the fact that Wikipedia — the 13th most visited website in the world — is an online collaborative encyclopedia edited by volunteers. While critics claim that ideological bias already exists on the platform, it’s largely composed of material that we generally understand to be true with citations to information published by men.
But now it’s 2021 and we need to overcorrect these sources because the gender of the researchers is unacceptable. Because it should be WOKEpedia, not Wikipedia.
The bigger question is, what difference does it make? Should the source of information be rendered male or female? Is the truth validated by the gender of the messenger? And should the person taking in the research even take the sex of the source author into consideration?
Anyone who is from the planet Earth understands this one fundamental truth — that the world we enjoy was built by the hands of men. There’s no taking this back or trying to make adjustments for a concept that has been the bedrock of society since the dawn of civilization. Until women take interest and compete in these fields to the degree that men do, we can count on a man to have done the very critical work needed for society to flourish.
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