Mark wrote:
Perhaps it shows my political leanings, but I don't really like that approach. Certainly we should have all opinions represented, and if certain opinions are only represented by women, then we should have women represented. But we should represent all opinions, not based on simple categorizations like gender, race, etc.---you can't assume that someone has certain personality or characteristics because they're female, or male, or hispanic, or whatnot (certainly most people I know offline don't follow the stereotypes, and many fit 'opposite' roles better). As far as wikipedia goes, things like inclusionist vs. deletionist, pro- vs. anti-banning, etc., are all more relevant distinctions by at least an order of magnitude.
So if there's a woman on the arbitration committee (or multiple women), it should be because of who they are, not just because we wanted to throw a token woman on there. Which, fortunately, is how Wikipedia normally works---I often can't tell if someone is male or female until it gets mentioned long after I've interacted with them for a while, and there's some surprises (for whatever reason, I thought that evercat was female, and that anthere was male).
Generally I agree. I don't want to see a token woman either (or a token anyone else). But I think Wikipedia has suffered in the past from an invisibility of women, it's only recently that I've noticed more women around, and I think the (possible) lack of female input in the arbitration committee is a shame. But that said, it's not something I'm going to bang on about.
And, FWIW, we allowed *everyone* on a committee who wanted to be on one. So at the moment the reason there are no women is because no women volunteered. If someone wants to volunteer, male or female, we could use an extra member to keep the numbers at the right level, so talk to Mr. Wales asap. =]
At least two women, Angela and I, /were/ available for the arbitration committee. Both of us expressed a preference for mediation but an availability for arbitration. Jimbo went with our preference and that's fine, but since Alex pointed out the apparently all male arbitration committee I've thought that this is an issue that should be addressed if possible. If UC is firm on leaving the committee this seems a good opportunity. Any woman out there want a job? No pay, lots of hassle, but the potential for an occasional warm fuzzy feeling inside.
--sannse