On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Beria,

Beria, you and I have both been here for a long time, both on the Gender Gap list and on Wikimedia projects generally. And unless I'm missing something, I don't think either of us have offered up a plan of how to explore or reduce the gender gap. I agree with you that posts like Sarah's are probably not getting to the core of the gender gap issue (and I suspect she would agree) -- but personally, I don't think they do any harm, and I do think they help people on this list find opportunities to work together and begin to develop working relationships.

But..that's beside the point. How about if you and I both make an effort to suggest issues this list could take on that would be useful? I would be very interested to hear how you would like to approach things, and I could probably manage to string together my thoughts in a useful way as well. What do you think? Let's propose some alternative, or additional, directions the discussion here might take.

Several women involved with chapter leadership are helping to organise two conferences: One for women's leadership in the WMF movement, one for the gender gap. That's a major, major accomplishment. These both be firsts of their kind and demonstrate leadership from women. The list has been fantastic in some ways in terms of inspiring the creation of both. I'd love to see more discussion about these topics, and solutions for how to support women in leadership positions around the globe. It would be fantastic if some of the members here could help promote the women's leadership conference (which is not about increasing female editing) at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp . :) By supporting women, by helping attract women to leadership positions, we should hopefully improve the situation down the line. That's one of the beautiful things about femocracy. :)

It would also be fantastic to draw more attention to these women who are successful, determine how we can support them, continue to support them. This list is often focused on American women on English Wikipedia to the exclusion of all else. Let's really work on celebrating women around the globe. There is a Hungarian woman who has done hugely awesome things for Wikimedia Hungary. There is another woman from Asia who helped her chapter get a million dollar grant. There is a Dutch woman who helped organise GLAM Camp. Norway's involvement with Wiki Loves Monuments owes a lot to a few female members. Argentina has four women on their Chapter board. Italy has several women who do high level GLAM work and coordinate projects across multiple countries.

Before we go much further though, I think we do need to document what the status of the gender gap is. Can you help improve http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/FAQ/Perspectives those perspectives? I don't think you can begin to fix the problem unless you know what it is. This is an important first step in terms of beginning to understand the scope of the problem.