(just to note; it's in my userspace - I got the "singled out" book the other day, and hopefully we can finish the article in the next day or so) Tom On 20 June 2012 20:22, Chris Keating &lt;chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com <mailto:chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com>> wrote: Dear all, Just wanted to let you know about some interesting contributions to the Wikimedia article gender balance from a slightly unexpected source. On Saturday, Wikimedia UK had a World War I-themed Editathon[1], where we essentially put a lot of Wikimedians and a group of academics in a room and asked them to help improve coverage of World War I. The gender balance was markedly better amongst the academics we'd invited (4 men, 3 women) than among the Wikimedians (20 men, no women at all) - which prompted quite a lot of debate about gender balance among Wikimedia volunteers (not very good) and also about the gender balance of Wikipedia's coverage of the topic (also, not very good!). It might also be that we'd taken a lot of steps to promote the event amongst the English Wikipedia's large and active military history community (which probably has worse than average gender balance, at a guess). I'm pleased to say that one of the outcomes from the event is an article, currently in sandbox but well worthy of a DYK nom when in due course, on the topic of "Surplus women" - a demographic imbalance that existed (or was perceived) in Western Europe in the industrial era, accentuated by the mass slaughter of World War I, and hitherto completely absent from Wikipedia. You can have a look at it here :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ErrantX/Sandbox/Surplus_women Many thanks, Chris Wikimedia UK [1] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/World_War_I/World_War_I_Editathon _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

One comment on your draft, is that the langugage makes it a bit unclear for the average reader if/that the imbalance in England was because the males left the country and/or were killed in overseas wars. It's implied but not sufficiently explicit so some people might get confused. Also, the topic of surplus males is probably more timely today and I've thought about writing an article about it, so this certainly is relevant. More males are born in general since they aren't as hearty as females. Today with modern medicine more survive accident and disease, there are more males that females in the post 1960s generations and more single angry males mean more violence. It's worse in countries like China and India where they abort so many female fetuses. A number of things have been written on this topic, which I have filed someplace. The one that jumps out at me without much research is: Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population Studies show married or co-habitating males have generally lower testosterone levels. I'm sure some of my research notes that times of surplus females tend to be times of peace and peace activism. 1920s saw great peace activity led by women. 1960s when there was a slight surplus of women ready to make love, peace was a big issue among all those happy males who didn't want to trade making love for making war. Today all those young guys worldwide want to do to deal with their frustrations is fight in sports riots or join the Black Bloc and break windows or overthrow their tyrants - or edit wikipedia? India and China may need a big land war to deal with their excess male problems. Iraq and Iran didn't have that problem after they sent millions of young men to die in 1980s Iraq-Iran land war. In fact, I'm sure if I researched I'd find that I'm not the only one to speculate that older males don't like all that poltiical and sexual competition from younger males so regularly they have to decrease the population by sending them off to foreign wars or colonies. So there's a method to the old warmonger male's madness.... So this is quite a big topic - though I'm not sure if it calls for one article called "Surplus males or females" or "Surplus gender demographics" or whatever the experts call the broader topic. Busy on a writing deadline so just don't have time to do the research right now. But I think I've thrown enough hints out there to help anyone go frolicking through the internet for lots of good WP:RS :-) CM _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

One comment on your draft, is that the langugage makes it a bit unclear for the average reader if/that the imbalance in England was because the males left the country and/or were killed in overseas wars. It's implied but not sufficiently explicit so some people might get confused.

Also, the topic of surplus males is probably more timely today and I've thought about writing an article about it, so this certainly is relevant.

So this is quite a big topic - though I'm not sure if it calls for one article called "Surplus males or females" or "Surplus gender demographics" or whatever the experts call the broader topic.