Message: 2
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:02:39 +1000
From: Laura Hale <laura(a)fanhistory.com>
To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
<gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] what follows from "most editors do not
gender-identify"
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<CAGaPgkTx2HgWR1CkYuMmSTtmpnY5WawBeBpfQE6abVXnj0xxDw(a)mail.gmail.com>
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On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 1:29 AM, Adam Wight <spam(a)ludd.net> wrote:
IMO, recruiting more women editors is an
excellent way to
combat that bias, because it doesn't presuppose we know how to fix the
problem... only that we know some people who can do the job.
At the end of the day, I'd need to see data which supports this as a
theory. I've been involved in the fan fiction writing community for more
years than I would care to count before taking a two year break. The
community probably has the inverse gender proportion of English Wikipedia.
One of the CONTINUAL problems is that women do not write about female
characters. They often ignore them. More women write male/male erotica
inside the female dominated fan fiction community than women write
female/female erotica. (And in some communities, female writers of
male/male fan fiction outnumber the female writers of male/female fan
fiction inside a specific fan community.) I know of a few female
contributors who edit sport articles, but rarely edit women's sport
articles.
Do you have any data to back up the theory that women will write women's
content?
This is a good point. I wonder if it's a matter of the women most likely to be
feminism-aware, or assertive enough, to forge ahead into non-traditional roles, also being
inclined towards a tendency to shun female-oriented topics in favour of doing something
like entering the male sphere to write about men's topics? Back when female
journalists were relegated to the pink ghetto female-interest columns, with the Agony Aunt
stuff and the recipe column, they struggled to get different assignments. And women
fiction writers were only acceptable if they wrote children's books and the like. I
think perhaps some women writers are caught in a bind, they don't want to be confined
to fluffy female-oriented topics like Spring fashions, but then on the other hand, they
don't want to be pigeon-holed as a "feminist", and then get stereotyped by
other writers or editors as a "feminazi" who can't write about anything
beyond that. Being labelled as a vocal feminist is
still pejorative to many people,
there's a definite stigma in certain circles, and it's tough to break out of that
double bind predicament.
I just want to add a suggestion that I haven't seen really discussed, and that is the
idea of supporting more diversity among male editors as a way of making an encyclopedia
that would be more inviting for potential female editors. It's a lot harder, if not
impossible, for women to make much progress in growing their numbers without male
supporters who aren't afraid to be vocal when they see a need, and help bridge that
gap... Just because there are topics about women that haven't been written yet,
doesn't mean they necessarily have to be started by an editor identifying as female.
In the long run, however, it will be mostly women who will write articles on topics of
particular concern to women. I recall adding info to the Dowry article, I cited a source
that discussed how dowry killings gained more coverage in India's newspapers when they
began hiring more female journalists in the 1970s. Hard news articles on women's
issues are most often suggested by female journalists and female editors, at least that is
my anecdotal impression. I think it was the Ladies' Home Journal that was once
entirely edited by men, until a group of feminist writers staged a revolt in the 1970s and
had women brought into the magazine's editorial board....must look that up, and
perhaps add the info to WP if it isn't there yet.