Wikipedia – by certain metrics – is the largest “compendium of human knowledge” in the world. It is also a sexist, racist, marginalising, macho endeavour that scrubs women from the history books in favour of the middle-class white men who author it. Didn’t you know? It was news to me too – perhaps I am brainwashed by those same middle-class white men; so captured by their cultural hegemony that I cannot even see my chains. (Agh! The middle-class male strikes again.)

Thank God for Sandi Toksvig, then, here to lay it all out, immune from the internal misogyny that afflicts the rest of us. The British/Danish TV presenter told a crowd at Cheltenham Literature Festival in the UK last week that Wikipedia, for too long, has been allowed to favour the accomplishment of man; that it approaches women with a mindset more suited to the early 20th century; that it is patronising, merely pretending to be egalitarian in nature. Only 18 per cent of Wikipedia profiles concern women, she says. Because the majority of the volunteer editors are men, she goes on, the gender bias is to be expected.

And so, if Wikipedia is the go-to source for anyone after low-barrier, easy-to-consume information, then the world is in trouble. In fact, maybe the sexual revolution never happened; and all advancements in gender parity were an illusion. Justice will elude women until they achieve proper Wikipedia representation. And so........

© The Irish Times