Puppy wrote: <snip>
Now women's health issues is important, and it would concern me should they be neglected. Blow dryers probably gets neglected for the same reason can opener is a stub - it simply isn't that notable a topic compared to WWII, or menstruation.
I secretly suspect that if it /were/ expanded, it would quickly be culled as "cruft" - we've had joke articles (eg. European toilet roll holder, floating around some BJAODN archive) that are longer than the articles on real-world objects. The more likely (and publically acceptable) reason why these articles haven't been expanded is lack of reference materials - what can people write about them that is verifiable and not original research? Short of advertisements in long-lost "women's magazines", I doubt that much raw material was ever produced. /Possibly/ there are reviews by consumer associations, but they're probably in the realm of pay-access and hence not particularly friendly...
This is not to say that improving and expanding such articles is not desirable - after all, we wish to be the premier source of general information on everything
Well, yes.
- but it is not due to gender bias, and to imply that it is to me is
reinforcing the "woman-as-empty-headed-shallow-person".
Claims of gender bias are /rarely/ seen as justified, mainly due to saturation and desensitisation by female chauvinists who scream "OMG gender bias" at every available oppurtunity. Sadly, as a result, very few claims of gender bias are treated seriously, regardless of who is making them.
Why all the variations on "menstrual" point to one article is probably due to the fact that they are so close to synonymous that to split them would be introducing redundancy.
And yet, I've seen cases where multiple similar/synonymous articles that /could/ be merged exist as disjoint stubs. IMO the best solution is to merge the articles under one title, but explain the seperate points, preferably with one sub-heading for each incoming redirect (where applicable).
The only subjects of which I am aware which are over-subdivided, if you will, are politically or religiously charged subjects. Hence, Abortion is an enormous cascade of articles, because people have strong views, there is a legal debate, a religious debate, etc - but no one is arguing about a woman's menstrual cycle. I could be in error, but that is how it appears to me.
Yes, because I suspect that it's very hard for our predominately male editing population to POV push on something that they feel doesn't affect them.