On 9/10/2012 6:25 PM, Sarah wrote:
On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Valerie Aurora <valerie@adainitiative.org mailto:valerie@adainitiative.org> wrote:
I don't know enough about Wikipedia conventions to talk about this specific topic, but I can talk about the value of lists of "women in X." When we have few role models because there are few women in a field, one of the ways to increase women's participation is to show women or girls considering joining examples of women who are part of the field. -VAL
Hi Val, I agree, and although I don't have my user page listed in any other categories, I added it to this category yesterday when I saw the cat was up for deletion. It's looking a little sparse at the moment, with just eight entries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_Wikipedians
It would be wonderful if women would start adding themselves so that we get a good overview of how many women are active. You can do it either by adding [[Category:Female Wikipedians]] to the bottom of your user page, or by adding to your user page one of the user boxes listed on the category page.
Sarah
*I second. Also note that I just put it in Category:Wikipedians yesterday, so only now is it available for those who think to put themselves in any category and thus happen to find Category:Wikipedians . I don't think I did it myself til I'd been editing around 3 -4 years.
And of course there are women who don't want to be hassled by admitting they are women. There certainly was a point at which I wish I hadn't made it clear. (Still ambivalent about using real name.)
CM