On 8/31/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I will not comment on the "few women in the upper echelons of Wikipedia", but I can comment on the "very numerous women in the upper echelons of the Foundation". http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_2007_dungodung_79.jpg this is a picture taken at Wikimania, the first wikichix meeting.
From top, going to the right Sue Gardner, head of executive Henna, dev, from netherlands Phoebe, usa, leader of Wikimania 2006 and co-organiser of 2007 Frieda, italian, chair of Wikimedia Italy, board member of WMF Delphine, french, chapter coordinator of WMF Oooops, memory hole... Brianna, australia, wikicommons (keen I think) Another memory hole, shame on me. She is german and very involved in various Wikimedia Deutschland activity. Kat, usa, board member Aphaia, japanese, translation committee head Anthere, chair of WMF Sandy, communication manager
And I could cite many other good people missing here. Angela, previous board member, now chair of advisory board Sabine, new fundraising manager Elly, chair of Wikimedia Netherlands Alison, chair of Wikimedia UK
The 'memory holes' are Kate, English Wikipedian, admin and GIS expert, and Nina from the German chapter. Also missing from this picture: KJ and Frances, two of the top organizers in the Taiwan team for the 2007 conference; and the dozens of other women who were present as organizers, presenters and attendees (we just had an informal gathering, with little publicity). As a very subjective and imprecise guess, I'd say there were more women present at 2007's conference than in 2006; and certainly more in 2006 than in 2005. It's hard to say whether the in-person conferences represent the body of editors and contributors as a whole; but there are certainly more female editors in the projects than folks seem to be assuming.
-- phoebe