Claudia, thanks! To be clear, I do not think that gender-stereotyped-female-content has only been created by women. On the contrary, most of it, just like the rest of the Wikiverse family of projects, has been created by men. I do feel however, that the probability of young women contributing to (for example) articles about historical costume items such as hoop skirts (for example) is higher than that for men. Just as I feel that the probability of young men contributing to (for example) articles about digital power, such as electrical motor controllers (for example) is higher than that for women. Personally, I think the need for both articles is high and that both subjects are under-represented in the English Wikipedia.
Jane

On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 11:04 AM, <koltzenburg@w4w.net> wrote:
Hi Jane, thanks, I like your argumentation,
and I do agree with your slant in general, yet

hi all, second thoughts: with so many female user contributing to 'general'
topics already, why should non-female human beings not be able and willing
to contribute more good content on, e.g., clothing and cooking? Maybe some
gender stereotypes need to be done away with here in order to close content
gaps. Answers sought :)

best,
Claudia

---------- Original Message -----------
From:Jane Darnell <jane023@gmail.com>
To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-
l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent:Tue, 2 Jun 2015 08:51:57 +0200
Subject:Re: [Wiki-research-l] Gender Estimates Feedback

> Jason, thanks for your work. The problem you are
> trying to solve, however, is still not well-
> defined. Yes, we lack female editors, and yes,
> this probably has an adverse effect on our
> content. Until we understand why the women are not
> participating, and why when they do, they drop off
> more rapidly than men, it is fruitless to try to
> ramp up participation among women. In fact, this
> could worsen the situation if we manage to gain on
> board tons of women who leave in frustration after
> a few weeks or months, never to come back. We
> would then be damaging our chances to gain editors
> who could be become highly valued contributors.
> Other, unrelated research has shown that
> reversions have a tendency to drive people away
> very effectively, and new users have become more
> likely to be reverted since 2006. My suspicion is
> that women are affected by reversions more than
> men. If we think of this whole problem area as a
> multi-step process, then I think we need to set up
> something like this for every nth new user (male
> or female, whoever agrees to participate): 1) one-
> on-one interviews at start of sign-up 2) periodic
> checkup interviews per month 3) exit interviews at
> end of 3-month non-activity period.
>
> Once we understand the issues affecting newbies
> better, we can implement changes (or not) that can
> improve our lopsided participation profile (not
> just for gender but for all other participation
> gaps as well). On the content side, there is
> nothing preventing us from actively and
> aggressively starting translation efforts to
> spread the female biographies we already have
> across more language versions of Wikipedia.
> Wikipedia suffers from the gendergap in academic
> bias and is in fact worse by definition, because
> Wikipedia follows academia, and does not create
> original research
> (according to policy). Notability issues (because
> women didn't make the grade in early dictionaries
> of biography) become more prominent for women,
> just as they do for under-privileged non-white-US
> groups, so the women's biographies that are
> already out there in some language version are
> probably notable enough to be translated into any
> other language version. Having female biographies
> to read in any Wikipedia category breeds the
> creation/addition of more biographies by
> encouraging a "copycat" effect. Similarly, as
> women tend to be more oriented towards family
> issues, education, and daily life, we should
> aggressively ramp up coverage such as round-the-
> world customs regarding graduation ceremonies,
> weddings, funerals, baby showers, etc. Also,
> things like clothing items and accessories,
>  fashion trends, and cooking utensils are all notoriously
> under-covered on Wikipedia in all languages,
> whereas lots of content that is there in some
> language could just be translated across wikis.
>
> It is my expectation that Wikidata will make such
> translation tasks trivial and building interfaces
> to add content through translations is a type of
> contribution that can attract casual new users
> without seeming too threatening (in terms of
> potentially being reverted).
>
> Jane
>
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 2:09 AM, Jason Radford <jsradford@uchicago.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Since participating in the Inspire campaign, I got interested in the
> > question of exactly how many women would be needed on Wikipedia to
close
> > the gender gap.  I ran some simulations and came up with some fairly
> > radical numbers.  For example, according to my calculations, there are so
> > few current and new female editors that, even if every current and new
> > active, female editor stayed active for ten years, we wouldn't close the
> > gap.
> >
> > I've posted the results
> > <https://civilsociology.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/closing-the-gender-
gap-on-wikipedia-results-from-some-simulations/>
> > to my blog. It's password protected so I can share the results and get
> > feedback without making it pubic.  You can access them by using the
> > password "wikipedia". I'm hoping some of you with experience
researching
> > gender representation on Wikipedia would be able to catch any errors.
> >
> > Thanks!
> > Jason
> > --
> > Jason Radford
> > Doctoral Student, Sociology, University of Chicago
> > Visiting Researcher, Lazer Lab, Northeastern University
> > *Connect*: LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/jsradford>, Twitter
> > <http://www.twitter.com/jsradford>, University of Chicago
> > <http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Ejsradford/>
> > *Play Games for Science at Volunteer Science
> > <http://www.volunteerscience.com>*
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wiki-research-l mailing list
> > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> >
> >
------- End of Original Message -------


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