On 12/27/2011 4:20 AM, Béria Lima wrote:
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.
Or as I would have put it, most men don't know what
it's like to be
constantly insulted, denigrated, bullied, ignored, even if in subtle
fashion. Really short, really ugly, gay/transgender/bi, super nerdy guys
may know what it's like in adolescence, but when they mature and if they
gain skills that make them financially successful even many of them will
finally be allowed to join the "manhood" club, one of whose pass keys is
denigrating women. All this doesn't necessarily make women feel
inferior. But it may make women depressed, prone to lose onesself in
female addictions (food, kids, clothes, etc), unfocused, passive, or on
the other hand angry, destructive, revengeful, drama queeny (yeah!), etc
etc.
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.
Your analysis is more generous
than mine :-)
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. :(
Another idea - Someone could always post things in
french and then link
to google translate :-)