Hi,
My name is Delphine, and I am a woman.
This was for the AA like laconic presentation, everybody says hi now :)
As an introduction, I will say that I recognize myself in Kat's words here: http://www.mindspillage.org/wiki/Gender_and_feminism in the third paragraph. I would strongly urge to rename this list to some more inclusive name. But on the contrary to Kat, I joined. I guess I am interested in lurking, despite the name of the list.
I started editing Wikipedia in 2004, and at the time sought help on IRC on the French channels. My nickname "notafish" is gender neutral enough that people at the time interacted with me in a normal kind of way, until I wrote something that made it clear that I am a woman (as an aside, it is much harder in languages that grammatically call for gendered adjectives to delay the moment when you're going to be tagged as "woman"). Then things somewhat changed in the way other editors interacted with me. This said, I never experienced any negative reactions in Wikipedia (or any Wikimedia project) due to the fact that I am a woman, so I don't have much to bring to the table on that part.
However, I am extremely interested in the fact that, at least to my observation, the gender gap is slightly less important in the organization (Wikimedia) than it might be in the projects. While real-life informal meet-ups are very much male dominated, it seems to me that the organisation of events, chapter boards and membership, for example, are somehow not so male dominated. Or rather, that more women actually have found their place in those, and are often the lead in making things happen in real life.
I might be mistaken, and it might be some kind of a "selective awareness" which makes me see only the women, but I'd be interested in any kind of study that gives facts about how and why women engage in other parts of the Wikimedia movement, other than editing the projects.
Cheers,
Delphine