Laura,
I am of course only a sample of one, but in my experience based on the issues discussed at length in workshops and on the gendergap mailing list, often what is perceived to be anti-female behavior is enough to drive women away. Men, when perceiving anti-male behavior tend to do the opposite, namely they become aggressive and stand their ground. The key way to entice more women to contribute is to give them the tips and tricks they need to
1) feel their contribution is appreciated
2) see their contributions are reused in the normal ways of "wiki magic"
The main problem with keeping women on board is because men are more tech-savvy in general and can get both points much easier than women, who see both points much more easily on fb, pinterest, and other social media sites.
Jane
Sent from my iPad
I would love to know more about the damage, and what research has been done on the negative impacts of bringing awareness to the issues of a lack of representation of both women as contributors and as subjects of article has done to the cause of increasing this. The limited research on this subject that I have seen suggests that by bringing up this issue, the response has actually included a large backlash against women by males from since inside the community and by members of the media. At the same time, there is a new body of research emerging that women by being silent in response to misogynistic trolling are in some ways rewarding the behavior that awards the negative performance which further encourages additional harassment of women.
Indeed, based on observations I have of the community and in talking to other female contributors, the current environment on Wikipedia for women is to engage in performance activities that suggest they are male so as to avoid the type of attention that otherwise retards female participation in the project, and to otherwise submerge identity, refuse to claim credit for success and otherwise render this area invisible. This requirement for female engagement to be expressly male (either by assuming a male identity, or by modeling oneself after successful male contributors) would actually be interesting to research in terms of motivational issues for female participation on Wikipedia, and the goal of the Wikimedia Foundation in increasing overall participation on the project.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
On Saturday, February 22, 2014, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
nemowiki@gmail.com> wrote:
Jane Darnell, 22/02/2014 23:23:
[...]he amount of art in the museum is
overwhelmingly Italian, Dutch/Netherlandish, and French [...]
The horror! Those Italians, Dutch and French should really be ashamed of all the unjust advantage they amassed in centuries of abusive domination of the western arts.
More seriously speaking, I have no en.wiki or art competence to judge the editorial activity here described, but watch yourself when you use expressions which make it /sound/ like advocacy for some sort of affirmative action for underrepresented painters, or rationing of arts' tastes, or arts export quotas as for milk. You may do damage to your cause.
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