<div class="gmail_quote"><div>First, Sandy, <br><br>I totally agree with you - the few men who <br>use negative locker room talk about women have<br>caused the downfall of many women in management.<br>The majority of men don't make statements like this,<br>
but they do let them be discussed.<br>So good guys, stop being a part of the problem. Tell the<br>insecure guys to shut up, that nobody wants to hear that <br>stuff anymore.<br><br>Second, Miguel,<br><br>Thank you for pointing out that the gender gap <br>
exists all over the world. <br><br>You propose the Wikipedia site itself might be a problem, <br>because women don't want to work with it because<br>it isn't WYSIWYG. <*sigh*><br>The reasons being:<br><br>1. "men are a bit more obsessive in their work than women"<br>
2. "maybe it's the look of the site, not attractive enough" <br>3. "women tend to focus their attention on people, instead of things, as men do"<br><br>#1 & #3 have been stated about women and work for over a century.<br>
<br>#2 --> Has a woman *actually* told you that she won't post to <br>Wikipedia because she finds the interface too difficult? <br>You're proposing that women don't want to post as experts <br>because they don't want
to be an expert in using a complex interface.<br>Because of a deficiency with women, they don't want to become<br>experts with a system that would allow them to post their<br>expert opinion.<br>I sense a catch-22 argument here.<br>
Reworking the Wikipedia interface is not really addressing the problem.<br><br>Another reason why "women don't want to ____ because ______"<br>We should have a Wiki page on these bizarre reasons.<br>If we put them in a long list it might not help anyone, but<br>
it might be humorous. We could just refer to reason #1054<br>or #782 or #11659 with links to the Wiki page. Good for<br>a laugh. Women could post any new funnies, like "women <br>aren't as obsessive about their work as men are".<br>
This might become the most popular set of pages on Wikipedia.<br>Of course, it would probably attract trolls. So let's not.<br>
<br>To have a serious response to the problem, let's have a <br>'Women Post to Wiki' month, and have a banner<br>about it on every Wiki page during the month. It validates that <br>the world community accepts women as experts, and invites <br>
women to post who may have thought about it before, but didn't. <br>I love that Google has different logos every day. Wiki <br>can have a different logo for that month.<br><br>- Susan Spencer Conklin<br><br></div></div>