Return food for thought:
Inferiority is not always something you feel because of a problem that
you have wrong inside you. Often times, there are systematic problems
that help reinforce this. Some people have categorically treated as
inferior. Having a male suggest this is all in the minds of female
contributors is not a useful contribution to the conversation because it
devalues the experiences of female contributors on this list, on a list
dedicated specifically to fixing these problems. We want to empower
female contributors and leaders. We want them to go back to their
communities and help work towards increasing overall participation to
Wikimedia projects and female participation to Wikimedia projects.
Dismissing real and valid concerns does not help: It hurts. A man
quoting a woman to dismiss valid concerns makes it worse. I know that
was probably not your intent. I know you probably did not intend to
cause additional hurt by dismissing valid concerns.
If we want to fix this problem, we need to remember this.
If we have women saying "I am having trouble connecting to this list.
I do not feel it represents my interests. The primary focus is on
articles of interest to a narrow audience," then we need to work to be
more inclusive. I'd love to know more about what is happening in
regards to women's related content on French Wikipedia, efforts being
made by the community to increase female participation on various
Wikimedia Foundation projects, the quality of women's related content on
French Wikipedia. We don't often have a chance to hear this narrative.
There are 115 million native speakers of the language and around 270
million people who can speak it. It is the official language in some 29
countries around the globe including France. France ranks ninth in the
amount of visitors to English Wikipedia. French Wikipedia accounts for
4.7% of traffic to ALL language Wikipedia. There is a huge potential to
grow the female participation rates and the general French speaking
participation rates on Wikimedia projects.
How can we support this? How
can we use the list to support contributors who do not speak English?
What steps can we take to make sure we are more inclusive? One of the
failings of the gender gap list is we so rarely do that. :(
_____
Béria Lima
Wikimedia Portugal
(351) 963 953 042
Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.