Community Insights/Community Insights 2020 Report/Collaboration, Diversity & Inclusion (2020)/Gender, language, age, and education

2020 Collaboration, Diversity & Inclusion Supplement

• Executive Summary
• Gender, language, age, and education
• Geographical and project differences
• Methodology
• Statistical endnotes
• Data appendices
• Community Insights Home

Gender, language, age, and education differences in the experienced Wikimedia social environment

To examine potential differences in Collaborative Engagement, Diversity, and Inclusion experienced by movement contributors with different demographic profiles, we looked at gender, language, age and education as predictors of the different social climate factors.

Gender (Male vs Non-Male)

Figure 1: Collaborative Engagement factors were experienced more strongly by males with the exception of self-awareness and confidence in Movement Strategy.

Gender and Collaborative Engagement

As noted by the superscript asterisk marks in the chart labels, six of the nine Collaborative Engagement factors were rated significantly higher by males than their non-male identifying counterparts. On average, Males were 11% more likely than non-males to share favorable ratings. Males reported more favorable conditions for Problem Solving & Negotiating (26% more favorable ratings); Awareness of Others (21% more favorable ratings); Movement Leadership (18% more favorable ratings); Feelings of Belonging (12% more favorable ratings); and Engagement (15% more favorable ratings) than non-males. Non-males, however, were 24% more likely to share favorable ratings of Movement Strategy although the means and medians are equal. ^1.1

Gender, Diversity, & Inclusion

Figure 2: Non-males were much more likely to experience discrimination and less likely to experience an inclusive culture or individual commitment to diversity than males.

Across all five diversity and inclusion factors, on average, Males were 10% more likely than non-males to share favorable ratings. The largest gender difference was observed in relation to experiences of Non-Discrimination and, interestingly, Individual Commitment to Diversity in which males were 16 and 17% more likely to share favorable ratings than non-males. There were also significant differences predicted by gender and Inclusive Culture. Males were 10% more likely to share favorable ratings for Inclusive Culture and were especially less likely to experience or witness discrimination than others. ^1.2

Language (English vs Non-English)

Statistical tests were also used to explore group differences between male and non-male identifying participants along each of the Collaborative Engagement as well as Diversity and Inclusion factors.

Language and Collaborative Engagement

Figure 3: Collaborative Engagement factors were experienced more strongly by those with English fluency, whether Native or otherwise.

As noted by the superscript asterisk marks in the chart labels, six of the nine Collaborative Engagement factors, which, on average were 7-8% more likely to receive a favorable rating from those with multiple language fluencies and those who were fluent in English compared to those without English fluency.

The most significant language difference was observed in relation to experiences of Feelings of Belonging, Movement Leadership, Collaborative Intention, and Awareness of Self. In all cases, fluent English speakers rated the factors more favorably than their non-English counterparts. In the case of Self-Awareness, this difference stood out the most, English-fluent contributors were 63% more likely to share a favorable rating than those who were not English fluent. For the other significant items this difference was less pronounced and ranged from 3% to 13% more likelihood of favorable ratings.^1.3

Additionally, although they have been combined for graphing purposes, it is useful to note that in the case of two factors, having an additional language fluency also operated as a moderator those non-English fluent contributors with more than one language fluency.  Non-English contributors with more than one language fluency were nearly half as likely to share favorable ratings of Feelings of Belonging and three-and-a-half times more likely to share favorable ratings of Self-Awareness than their single fluency, non-English counterparts.

Language, Diversity, & Inclusion

Figure 4: Inclusion factors were experienced more strongly by those with additional language fluency in a non-English language, however, they were also more likely to experience discrimination.

Across all five diversity and inclusion factors, English-fluent contributors were about nine percent more likely to share favorable ratings. The most noticeable differences were observed in relation to experiences of Inclusive Interactions (15% more likelihood of favorable ratings) and Inclusive Culture (11% more likelihood of favorable ratings). As with gender dominance, language dominance demonstrated the same pattern of more favorable ratings by contributors representing the dominant group.^1.4

Again, although they have been combined for graphing purposes, as with the Collaborative Engagement factors, there were some significant differences between non-English contributors who had additional language fluency and than their non-English counterparts who were monolingual. On average, those non-English contributors with more than one language fluency shared more favorable ratings than their non-English counterparts to the extent that the language fluency gap was reduced to only two percent.

Age and Education

With regard to influences of age and education on Collaborative Engagement factors, there were not many differences detectable within the obtained sample. Only a few direct effects were significant: Fairness was significantly different based on education, fewer years of formal education predicted an eighteen percent increase in the proportion of contributors reporting favorable scores, higher than average education also related to 22% lower scores in Fairness. Self-Awareness demonstrated a curvilinear relationship to both age and education in with an interaction effect in which younger and older contributors were about twice as likely to report favorable scores than predominant age group and those with more or less than average education were about 25% less likely to report favorable scores (p < .05).

While another factor, Awareness of Others (p < .05), was predicted by age where older age predicted a twelve percent decrease in the proportion of contributors reporting favorable scores. Awareness of Others also demonstrated a curvilinear relationship to education where those with less or more than average education levels were 25% less likely to report favorable scores. ^1.5

In terms of Diversity and Inclusion, there were direct effects of age and education, related to three factors: (1) Leadership Commitment to Diversity, which related to slightly higher ratings for younger, and more educated participants: younger contributors were 10% more likely to score favorably while those less educated were 18% less likely to do so; (2) Individual Commitment to Diversity where the interaction effect was significant in which for younger contributors were 11% more likely to give favorable scores, while having more or less than average education related to 13% increase in favorable scores; and (3) Inclusive Interactions, in which Age carried the prediction most, younger participants reported somewhat higher ratings with 9% more favorable scores and those with less than average years of formal education were 21% less likely to report favorable conditions. ^1.6

Based on what can be ascertained about age and education, it does not appear that older age relates to experiential inequity, however, the lack of less educated participants indicates a natural exclusion of less educated persons from our projects which will need to be addressed before we can truly measure differences in experiences based on education as a demographic indicator.