Oliver makes a very good point about statements regarding 'men think _____'.
Statements of 'women are/do/think _____ ' are distracting, plus they're usually at their baseline, insulting. It's the overgeneralization, and the mind- reading implicit in these statements that render them counter-productive.
The actions recently initiated by independent groups to invite women to participate in Wikipedia are wonderful.
These events announce that women are wanted and accepted as experts, and will be supported as such by Wikipedia. A successful campaign effort could be as conceptually simple as a continous PR push to invite women are to participate. No need to bog down so much in the why. Do the research, and act on it, but go ahead with the active recruitment.
All people at their foundation seek pleasure and avoid pain (I don't mean this in a shallow way). Letting women know that Wikipedia is working to make contribution a less-than-painful endeavor may prove to be the majority of the battle, although it would take a campaign that lasts more than a month. One month to kick off a year-long campaign is certainly appropriate. A year-long campaign is also appropriate because we need to reach 50% of the population! The heterogeneity inherit in such a large population means that many of the results returned from studies will apply to one sector but not the rest. Therefore the invitation to contribute will most likely be the most effective approach. Any approach based on 'women are ___' will be cultural, will be expensive to determine, and will apply to subsets of women, and not to the majority of women worldwide, outside of the change in women's status during the last 150 years. It's nice to be able to own a business, and it's nice that it's no longer legal for a husband to beat his wife with a stick (rule of thumb!) in most places where I could easily travel. :D
I'm not saying to cease investigation for solutions to Wikipedia's issues. The areas of proposed investigation are all worthwhile. And totalled up the results will benefit everyone, not just women, as the current state of these areas are offensive (content) disenfranchising (inappropriate editing), or barriers to contribution (interface) to both men and women.
The historical reasons for the lower percentage of women in science and technology are mostly the same reasons women aren't participating on Wikipedia. There will be a few differences, but on the whole moving forward is just as important as studying why. The studying why is very expensive, and has been going on for decades. Let's just get on with it, and put out the PR that we are celebrating and requesting women's participation as experts on the Wikipedia site.
- Susan
Message: 3 Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:14:57 +0000 From: Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Women4Wikipedia To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects <gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: AANLkTinh-T23spCSVmeM2WrD1zd43hdCa9v+PLDHOxZY@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Could we maybe not make big overgeneralisations about what "men" think and return to the topic at hand? This mailing list shouldn't be about discrediting the intentions of feminists. Neither should it be about discrediting the intentions of men, or working on the assumption that somebody can't be both.