On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Béria Lima <beria.lima@wikimedia.pt> wrote:
I suggest to you that distilling the gendergap issue down to "pro-porn culture"  when participants in the WikiWomen camp don't even rate this issue in its top 10, and the majority of women participating in discussion over the last few days are saying that it might be an issue but it's not the big issue, is pretty much a classic example of shouting over the voices of women who disagree with your focus.

+1

And for what its worth, WWC girls have no problem discussing sex, porn or male genitalia (we did spend more than 20 min laughing about the lies that europeans tell in studies like the one who originate this: http://alphadesigner.com/blog/europe-according-penis-size/ (which clearly states that French and Hungarians like to tell big fat lies ;) ) and the people who can peform autocoitus. So isn't that big of a issue. (and the map also shows that :-D )

+2 .  I'd really like to blank those two pictures out of my brain forever.  Curiosity is an evil thing,  What session was that where we derailed it by talking about those things?  Was it the methodology one?

Anyway, on our reasons why we felt women did not contribute, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiWomenCamp_day_1_by_Laura_Hale_%2830%29.JPG was my group's mind map.  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiWomenCamp_day_1_068.jpg was the big group reasons.

Our group broadly categorised why women did not participate as: Personal, Environmental, Community.  One group discussed low self esteem and lack of confidence, cultural conditioning to not question authority in the same way as another perspective.  There were discussions about how different groups of women had different reasons why they did not participate.  A woman in a rural area with less of an education is going to have different reasons for non-participation than a highly educated woman in an urban setting.

At one point, we discussed why women edit and why we continue to edit despite all the crap we have to deal with.  I think ultimately this boiled down to the following:
1.  We are bossy and stubborn. 
2.  We think what we're contributing matters and is important for a variety of reasons.  (Almost none of which were "Knowledge should be free.")
3.  Some of us come from cultures with a built in expectation that we will do work for free.

Lots of consensus that many of the issues as to why women do not contribute could be overcome IF we could correctly tap into motivation. 

Another view was if we word the negative reasons why women would contribute, women come off badly.  Women would contribute if only the interface was simple enough for them to use.

Sincerely,
Laura Hale

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