A dataset of notable individuals scraped from Wikipedia reveals something unsurprising- that the bar for women to be remembered was much higher than those for men.

The authors who compiled this dataset also calculated a notability index or score using five dimensions.^[1]For most of history, this score has been higher for women than for men. Yet, the proportion of women on Wikipedia has remained below 30 percent of all notable individuals until the late 1990s. This suggests that there might be 'missing women' in history- those whose work was good but not exceptional enough to earn them a place in our history or at least, on Wikipedia.

This trend has almost disappeared in recent years, however. The proportion of women on Wikipedia has been rising. Simultaneously, the notability scores of men and women are no longer so different. This is mostly good news, but it's not clear whether this is a direct corollary of the nature of the notability score itself.

In the age of Instagram heroes, one wonders whether Wikipedia is truly where to go looking for the popular kids.