Funny, I had no clue a "forced migration" was taking place - just shows you
how much happens in the one Wikipedia without others knowing (who are
highly active).
I'm glad to see the artists categories are still ok. We have American women
artists, but, I believe they are also listed in American artists (or their
respective type of art). I wonder what other categories have this issue?
-Sarah
On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Leslie Carr <lcarr(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Salon has also picked this up -
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/wikipedia_moves_women_to_american_women_nov…
On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 4:13 AM, María Sefidari <kewlshrink(a)yahoo.es>
wrote:
The New York Times also has an article about
this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism-toward-f…
Kind regards,
María
Enviado desde mi dispositivo móvil
El 25/04/2013, a las 01:21, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com>
escribió:
From The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/women-novelists-wikipedia-female-a…
Attention female authors: you may be being segregated from your male
peers
on Wikipedia. On the online encyclopedia's
"American Novelists" page,
women
authors are hard to find. Instead they have been
filed primarily under
"American Women Novelists."
Vanity Fair contributing editor Elissa Schappell made this observation
and
posted on Facebook Wednesday:
Women Writers take heed, you are being erased on Wikipedia. It would
appear
that in order to make room for male writers,
women novelists (such as Amy
Tan, Harper Lee, Donna Tartt and 300 others) have been moved off the
"American Novelists" page and into the "American Women Novelists"
category.
Not the back of the bus, or the kiddie table
exactly--except of
course--when
you google "American Novelists" the
list that appears is almost
exclusively
men (3,387 men). The explanation on the pages is
that the list of
American
Novelists is too long, therefore sub-categories
are necessary.
Idea: What about, "American Novelists with Penises" "American Novelists
Who
Are Vastly Over-Rated and Over-Paid" or
"American Novelists Who Aren't
Being
Read But Should Be" (Here you'd find a
lot of women, people of color...)
Want to see where you're sitting for eternity? Take a peek.
A disclaimer at the top of the American Novelists page reads, "This
category
may require frequent maintenance to avoid
becoming too large. It should
directly contain very few, if any, articles and should mainly contain
subcategories." Schappell suggests that Wikipedia dealt with this space
issue by moving the female authors off the page.
The Huffington Post reached out to Wikipedia for a response to
Schappell's
claims but so far has not heard back.
This is far from the first time that someone has expressed ire over the
"second-class" treatment of female authors. VIDA, an organization
dedicated
to women in literary arts, pointed out that in
2011 the New York Times
Book
Review printed reviews of 520 male authors'
books and only 273 books
written
by women.
In a recent blog post on The Huffington Post, author Liza Palmer wrote
about
thedouble standard that exists in the literary
world:
All too often, when a woman writes a book about family and relationships
the
reader will sigh that she felt the narrator's
inner monologues were
"whiny"
whereas when a male writer contemplates these
same topics he is being
"introspective." If a female writer uses humor in her dialogue she will
be
dismissed as "snarky", whereas if a
male writer uses humor, he has a
"biting
wit." So called chick-lit writers get pinned
with "predictable" endings,
while male writers writing about the same topics have endings that are
"satisfying."
Perhaps it's time that Wikipedia realized that both men and women are
great
American novelists and should show up when you
search for them.
--
Sarah Stierch
Wikimedia Foundation Program Evaluation Community Coordinator
Donate today and keep it free!
Visit me on Wikipedia!
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*Sarah Stierch*
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