Thank you Fæ for your experiences (especially the cautionary tale told by
the first one). I would like to also offer a more theoretical caveat, to wit
that any sort of "women-only" space within the Wikimedia framework may with
even the best of intentions backfire, or at least fail to meet its goal of
supporting those female or female-identifying editors who feel the need for
it.
To wit: there is a rather large percentage of women, not a majority but at
least a third, maybe even over 40 percent according to some studies*, who
actively avoid taking part socially in organizations likely to be dominated
by other women, or even informal such "taco fest" situations like, say,
hanging out at the pick-up/drop-off spot outside a school (at least in the
US; I'm sure that readers from other countries will be aware of more apt
analogies in their own cultures, if they exist). We need not go into the
reasons at this time.
But I suspect that that group of women probably accounts for a large share
of the women who _do_ edit Wikipedia regularly and successfully. So a
women-only space may ironically see far less use than expected, and
accomplish little of what might be hoped.
Daniel Case
*Deborah Tannen alludes to these in some of her books, and the decidedly
non-academic "The Twisted Sisterhood" is devoted entirely to this.