User:ReneeMagnan/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Women in computing in Canada

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article as I was considering it for my Wiki assignment, I find it to be an important subject of discussion and is a prevalent issue to this day. I found this article different from many other articles speaking on diversity in computing as it is country-specific to Canada, whereas many others seemed to be concentrated on statistics and inequalities in the United States. I thought the article was well organized, with lots of statistics and seemed to remain unbiased throughout.

Evaluate the article
The introductory sentence of the lead section was concise and immediately declared the subject of the article. The lead section covered much of the article's sections. Overall, the lead section presents a good overview of the article.

The content sections of the article covered a lot of relevant information. Although a section on the factors causing this issue in Canada could have been added. As this article speaks of the underrepresentation of women in the computing field in Canada, the addition of the specific reasons for this within Canada would have been relevant to include. A history or background section, included after the lead section, would have given a good introduction to this issue specifically its history in Canada. Such as, when did women enter the computing field in Canada. The article addresses a historically underrepresented population in the computing field and so is an important addition to Wikipedia's equity gaps.

The article seemed to be written from a neutral point of view, simply giving statistics and not drawing conclusions from them. Although the inclusion of the University of Waterloo example describing enrolment statistics of women in the computer science program was said to be an extreme and another example of a university with less extreme statistics should have been included. This would of given the education statistics a more well rounded approach, insuring not to favour one position or exaggerate the overall numbers.

Although much of the article's statistics were backed up by information and studies done in the early 2000's. The article could be further improved if current sources were added, allowing for more recent statistics to be included. This would give an overview of the issue throughout the years and if recent progress has been made or not. If statistics on race and gender were available, this would have given a more intersectional approach to the subject. Such as, statistics on the representation of black women in the computing in Canada. This is important to include as the statistics for women of colour could be disproportionately low in comparison to white women in this field.

The article is well-written, with clear and concise points. The sections are broken down and organized well. The article includes one image that demonstrates an organization teaching women how to code, it is well-captioned and adheres to Wikipedia's copyright regulations.

The talk page includes one comment speaking of the notability for the creation of this article. That there was enough country-specific statistics available to warrant it's creation as a separate article from the main article "Women in computing". This article is part of the following WikiProjects: Women's History, Women scientists, Computing, Canada, and science. It is rated C-class by all of these WikiProjects.

The article does a good job of organizing the information into well organized sections and giving statistics on the representation of women in computing in both education and workplace. The section on international comparison allows the issue in Canada to be put under comparison, if women are more or less represented in computing in Canada in respect to other countries. This helps to gauge how much of a country-specific issue it is. The addition of background information on the topic in Canada, reasons for the underrepresentation, more recent statistics and an intersectional approach would improve this article.