Hi all, I guess it's my turn for an introduction. I'm Karen and yes, I too am both female and a Wikipedian. I leave near New York City and am active in the Wikimedia NYC chapter, where I sometimes refer to myself as the token female (though I'm not actually, but sometimes it feels like it). I've been worrying for a good while now about what exactly keeps women turned off from Wikipedia, and I think there's a couple of factors. To quote from a post I made on another website about this topic: *The gender gap on Wikipedia is one of my pet peeves. It's real, it's undeniable, and it's only partially in our control, I think. Wikipedia can be a fighty place, no doubt. To stick around there can require you to be willing to do the virtual equivalent of stomping on someone's foot when they get in your face, which a lot of women, myself included, find difficult. Even more important to this issue, I think, though, is that it can require you to judge your own competence and decide it's high. If I might draw gross generalization here for a moment, imagine the following scenario: You're wandering around Wikipedia, and you come across the Friendship Bracelet article. Shock! You actually know a lot about friendship bracelets, and you can fill in a lot of the obvious gaps in the article with what you know! Do you: a) Fill in those gaps. This isn't controversial information, after all! b) Think about it, then decide that probably if it were that easy, someone else would already have done it, and therefore you are likely to be missing something about how this whole thing works Did you pick option A? You're a bit more likely to be male. B? Odds are on the side of you being female. No, this isn't across the board. I know plenty of people who cross those categories. But my sense is that this slight tendency of women to doubt their competence, coupled with the undeniable gatekeeping problem of experienced Wikipedians reverting just that sort of shouldn't-be-controversial-but-they-put-it-on-MY-article! edit, adds up to a repulsion factor. Women I know on Wikipedia often fall into one of two groups: those who will take you on, any time any place; and those who grind away in behind-the-scenes areas, copyediting articles, populating maps, cleaning up licensing rationales, and doing other largely-uncontroversial things. There seem to be more men who cover that middle ground, the ground where there's no fear of doing something noticeable but also no fear of talking back to someone if necessary. Again, I hasten to point out that this isn't true of everyone, by far. But as Kat Walsh wrote in an essay on the topic, it seems like it's less that Wikipedia isn't welcoming specifically to women and more that active, full-spectrum Wikipedianism is fitted best by certain personality types, and for some reason there seem to be more men who slot neatly into that type than women.* Those are my logical thoughts, but those of you who know me might remember that there is one, more illogical, thing that gets under my skin more than almost anything else: Wikipe-tan and her short skirt and thigh-high stockings. Why, WHY is it ok that we even joke about that being our "mascot"? An overtly sexualized, large-breasted woman who people regularly draw in bikinis and maid costumes? I mean, I know Wikipe-tan is not actually The Problem. But she's the most egregious example I think we have of the sort of unconscious "boyzone" culture that permeates a lot of collaborative sites these days. It doesn't even occur to a lot of men that that could be off-putting. They certainly don't mean it to be off-putting. And they're a little wounded when someone points out that, well, it *is*. Ok, I've ranted enough for now. I cede the floor. -Karen User:Fluffernutter