Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation

There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless). I just read this article: "International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel" http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an international academic computing membership organization) has a women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on other cultural factors. Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I thought it was interesting. -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com * _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l