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.
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.
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 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.
Cheers,
Delphine
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
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
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 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.
Cheers,
Delphine
-- @notafish
Differential participation is easy to explain. Editors are self-selected volunteers; aspects of our chapter and other organizational activities such as boards involve people who are chosen, and hiring is, by both law and preference, non-discriminatory. In each step as you move from self-selection to deliberate choice there is more opportunity to select women and plenty of active qualified people to chose. Equal opportunity has become ingrained in our culture.
The question remains: Why don't more women edit even those articles that we know women are interested in? And is there anything we can do to facilitate more participation?
Fred
On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Differential participation is easy to explain. Editors are self-selected volunteers; aspects of our chapter and other organizational activities such as boards involve people who are chosen, and hiring is, by both law and preference, non-discriminatory. In each step as you move from self-selection to deliberate choice there is more opportunity to select women and plenty of active qualified people to chose. Equal opportunity has become ingrained in our culture.
Might be true of boards and staff to some extent, but I don't think it is so relevant for real-life initiatives. Those usually come through with the people who come forward and decide they're going to do X or Z. And there, I feel women are more ready to come forward.
Delphine
2011/2/2 Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com: <snip>
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 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.
The lessened gender gap on the organizational level of Wikimedia has occurred to me as well.
I believe I have the answer for this, but it is not necessarily a "happy answer".
The online projects attract a good range of somewhat introverted tech-centric people, mostly male, who are not necessarily best equipped (or feel sufficiently confident) for real-life organizational activities.
People involved in real-life organizational activities are then somewhat more resembling of the general population on average (myself clearly excluded!), and so what we're really seeing I think is a "drop-out" of some of the nerdish personality types on this level.
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)