The gender-gap is still present at European universities. At a conference on woman and philosophy at the University of Leuven (1,60 % of female professors in philosophy on that time) a successful woman (of business) from the public suggested to promote a kind of coaching for female scientists as a catalyst for diminishing the gender-gap.

When there is good will and good capacity of more female editors, it would be interesting to offer a kind of personal coaching for new female editors (or other underrepresented groups).

 A team (of course it can be mixed) would be trained by WP for orienting adequately and politely the potentially future contributors. It can happen that later the result of the coaching will produce an article, an article made in cooperation, the suggestion of a new topic (that the new contributor could not formulate adequately), ea. The most important thing is that this person with good will and capacity receives a positively humane reply. That is in fact my experience in WP and I am very grateful to a male friend (in my case) for motivating me to publish in WP.  

Patricia

From: Lady of Shalott <ladyofshalott.wp@gmail.com>
Subject: [Gendergap] one woman's response about why she stopped editing Wikipedia
To: "Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects" <gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2011, 7:28 PM

The other day it occurred to me that a particular friend of mine could
be a great contributor to Wikipedia, and so I asked her if she ever
did. She said that she used to, and in fact started an article about a
particular topic (a particular biological taxon - I won't be more
specific at this point, but it is an extant article).  I asked her if
there was a particular reason she stopped, and her answer was,

"Yes, the last time I tried to, though admittedly that has been a few
years ago, I was unable to. I can't remember what the impediment was
but I'm basically a lazy person. If I have to jump through even one
hoop, I lose my passion."

Now perhaps she tried to edit an article protected for a very good
reason, or who knows what happened, but this event was enough to make
her stop. I imagine she's not the only person to react this way. Is
this reaction more typical of one sex than another? I have no idea. I
just thought I'd throw it into the mix of known reasons some people
don't edit Wikipedia.

Aleta/LadyofShalott

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