2011/2/2 Delphine Ménard
<notafishz@gmail.com>
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.
Since this list does not exclude men, I do not think it is nearly as problematic as the wikichix (which I joined but did understand the concerns about exclusion of men). Personally, I like the name because I think that it is a positive statement that the issue is real and that a plan is needed to address it. My work as a nurse was heavily process oriented with data mining and goal setting as the lead steps in fixing a problem. So, I see that naming the problem to be addressed (increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects) as a key factor in starting the process of fixing the problem.
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.
I self identified as female early on and it definitely made a difference in the way that people who knew interacted with me. Some positive and some negative.
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 agree that at the WMF board and staff level the situation is different than where volunteers interact with each other (talk pages, IRC, meet ups, email lists). Seems to be much more gender neutral at the WMF board and staff level except for when they interact with the WMF communities.
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.
I would be interested in seeing a break down of the stats about the off wiki activities to see if it is true that the gender gap is less. If it is, then I think that we need to look at why and see if we can learn ways to import it into the direct content producing activities.
Cheers,
Delphine
--
@notafish
Thank you for your comments despite your concerns about the biases that may be present in the email list as it is now structured. This is an important topic and you have good insights into the situation that need to be raised.
Sydney Poore
(FloNight)
NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost.
Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org
Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org
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