Why do you think over 80% of Wikipedia editors are men?

In a monogamous society (and thus one with the high levels of cooperation needed for a functioning civilasation) many men obsessively pour hours into projects which benifit everyone but have no particular benifit to themselves, doing it purely for the advancement of society (it is important that these projects do not benifit anyone else more than the person participating- which seperates this behaviour from charity). This sort of drive is at the base of most of our sceintific/technological advances.

Not as many women seem to engage in this behaviour as men. Who knows why? It's not that they're less capable, just that for whatever reasons they don't seem as interested (it's worth noting that not every man engages in this sort of behaviour either).

If you look at the full survey, you'll see that the number of women who responded as readers, even, was much lower than male readers; about 1:2. Overall (readers + contributors) women made up about 1/4 of all respondents. It's possible that the survey was flawed.

Just for comparison, the paper encyclopedia I worked for had a female-male split of (I'm gonna say) about 40/60 among our editors.

I've made factual changes to Wikipedia when I've found verifiable errors.

There are probably a number of factors involved.

RANDOM STUFF THAT PROBABLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, but I'm going to suggest it anyway:

More men in computer science/fields that involve working with computers = more opportunities to use the internet at work.

I would imagine that people with Asperger's or a penchant for specialized knowledge would be very drawn to wikipedia (totally speculative). Rates of Asperger's are higher in men.

The demographic of Wikipedia contributors also includes large numbers of people with masters degrees, if I recall correctly... perhaps women who have masters degrees, because of the in-fighting women seem to have in academia, prefer recognition to the anonymity of wikipedia, and prefer to write in blogs or other areas, whereas men are more okay with sharing their knowledge without being recognized.

Single mothers are more common than single fathers... so between work and a kid, they might have less time for the internet than the men who fathered their children.

Well, based on those statistics it seems that not only are Men the largest contributors, but single people as well.

I would infer that "Single Men" are the greatest contributor because they have nothing better to do

...and they were probably already on the internet doing....something else.

Men lack social skills so they do much better off in jobs where they sit in front of computers and have minimal social interactions. Unfortunately they also have a higher risk of remaining virgins well into their 30's. Oh well, you win some you lose some I guess.

Men are smarter overall, look at past scientists, mathematicians, and musicians; they are mostly men. Even the top chefs in the world are men! :0

How can a woman type while she's busy making a sandwich?

They don't have anything better to do since their wives do everything for them.