Hi Pine,
Thank you for your detailed answer. In fact what you mentionned in the second part of your
mail, the fact that such events might exclude certain class of people and suggest gender
favoritism is what fuelled remarks in the first place. This is what surprized me most,
because this is what women experience when contributing: being faced with an environment
that is essentially male represented. But that does not prompt aggressivity from the
underepresented part does it?
Research has shown that things become easier for an underrepresented community when it
achieves a representation of 30% within a group. Then things change "naturally".
However there is not only the question of women : how do we become more inclusive with
communities that would never make it to a 30% reprensentation level?
There is also an ambiguity here: to adress gender gap, identified along gender based
criteria, we apply gender bases approaches : more articles on women, designing more women
friendly events, designing gender targeted projects... There is the risk to be assigning
women further to a specific gender segregation, and to exclude non binary persons.
But how do we increase the participation of women without implicitely applying gender
criteria? It is not possible, we need to start somewhere.
Furthermore, How do we build a place where a-gender non binary persons feel accepted and
welcome?
To me it would seem natural to start with an editathon with non binary- only persons, to
make sure my biaised approach does not impact the result... But I am not going from the
outside to impose a way of doing things. If an agenda is set, it needs to be done by
themselves, trying to be inclusive means listening to what people are asking for, not
trying to impose a way of doing things from another perspective which would not be
representative.
In this the word "start with" is important, we are speaking of building
confidence in a secure space where one can build a contributing capacity before being
thrown in the vast melting pot of contributors.
To me, trying to deal with women representation, it felt like difficult to try to
understand the whole thing from the trans perspective which was brought to me. But I must
admit that I learnt so much, that the experience was worth it. I still consider myself as
biased, but willing to try hard to be more inclusive. This also goes with starting things
by bringing an agenda in my practice that is not mine.
So this is why the project "les sans pagEs" (without a page) does not include
the word woman. We can then focus on people and subjects which are not represented. A
contributor proposes articles on female horses, and there was one on the irish X case (on
the subject of abortion). People then can move away from biographies and start thematic
articles (harder to write but helping to link orphan articles, another aspect of the
gender gap). We even have a section for articles translated in other languages, because
we area global movement. A young italian contributor participating to our group discovered
he could not translate "LGBT swiss history" in italian because of the use of
"explicit language" (probably the word "sodomy" used in the article,
which is based on historical facts).
I have more questions than answers to these issues. One thing I am sure of, is that we
need to do things with a learn-and-try agile method with an open mind. I hear too often
"we need more research" and I dont think so: I think we need more action and
feedback from active contributor groups. We need to share experiences, we need to travel
and see how things are done elsewhere. I was happy to meet the mexican women group in
Geneva and hear from their experience: we changed our workshops after that. I was happy
meeting Rosie in Esino Lario and copying her concept of Women in red in the francophone
wikipedia. This brought more than the hundred of research papers I read because it dealt
with "how to" instead of "why is it". Reading about the constant
underrepresention of women can be very depressing, starting to get things moving is more
motivating (poke to the Kaylana effec).
And what I feel we need most of all is a certain lattitude to explore different ways of
doing things without being constantly criticized and harrassed. Harrassment is time
consuming and destroys all positive energy.
Have a nice week-end!
Natacha
Le 27 mai 2017 à 06:44, Pine W
<wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> a écrit :
Hi Natacha,
I just now got this email (perhaps it was held for list moderation) but thought I would
note that there have been gender-specific events before. I'm aware of the
WikiWomen's lunch which seems to be held yearly at Wikimania, and I believe that
Wikimedia Mexico has women-only editathons.
As a male I have no objections to gender-specific events happening on occasion. I think
that it's fine to have those kinds of sessions so long as they are designed and
resourced in ways that are arguably fair and don't suggest favoritism. I would be
concerned if such events happened in a way that excluded certain classes of people on a
regular basis in a way that seemed designed to deny them access to resources or personal
connections which might be of interest to them, if resources were assigned to one group
and not another in a way that suggested gender-based favoritism, etc.
In the situation that you described, setting up one event out of four to be
gender-specific sounds reasonable to me.
You might consider talking to organizers of previous WikiWomen's lunches and/or the
Wikimedia Mexico women's editathons to see if they have comments.
Writing as a male member of this list,
Pine
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Natacha Rault
<n.rault(a)me.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
I would like to starts a discussion on women only events. How are they perceived and do
they generate antagonism? I have always organized mixed events, until the first of march
2017, where an Art+feminism editathon was hosted by an LGBT lesbian association in Geneva,
and I announced it on the French Bistrot here (among other Art+Feminism events that were
all inclusive)
I did not want to impose other rules than theirs on their surroundings,so I announced a
woman only event for one of the 4 events organized. Some members of the community
disagreed and reacted strongly (although I can’t say all were extremely respectful this is
just normal bread when dealing with the gender gap) but one was so stunning and
persistant (he was blocked in the end and now has a topic ban) that this generated the
thought that we might need to reflect more on safe spaces and organize such events more
systematically, in each conference and each Wikimania, until this is no issue any more. I
remember attending the women only picnic at Wikimania in Esino Lario and being confronted
with a different attitude: there it only seemed normal.
What do you think and what is your experience on this issue? I am interested to know all
points of vue provided they are formulated with respect.
Nattes à chat (mostly active on les sans pages on the French wiki)
_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap