Tim wrote "Why is Wikipedia so repellant to women? I couldn't begin to speculate. Any ideas?"
Might have a couple ones to give. I do not think it is a question of repellance.
You may notice than the under representation is particularly critical for a age over 30-35. You may ask female wikipedians their age to check. Most are below 35. The next question would be "do you have kids ?".
Generally, most women over 30-35 do have kids.
Check on google "free time, housework, women, men" and contemplate results. All studies I know show that at least in european countries, men enjoy a significantly higher leisure time compared to women, essentially due to less time spend on housework chores and children care. This is especially significant as most participants to Wikipedia are educated people, which often implies working people (when over 30) Ask a working mother how she occupies her time in the evening versus how a man occupy his time, and I think it will enlighten you.
This other point is significant as well I think. When you are an already overworked mom, and your family or most friends realise the time you spend over Wikipedia, their comment is at best "you are crazy", and at worse, "you are damaging your family". This is not the type of comment a man having a serious associative activity will get.
When you answer that you also have a brain (and enjoy using it) and have the desire to participate to "big" things, not only family and job, as you feel teaching kids, though a very nice activity is not satisfying you enough as a participation to the grand scheme of things, a woman will often get as an answer "but you can't feel you are useless, look, you have a nice husband and great kids who need you and love you, you are very important to them".
Who would ever DARE saying to a man that he should not feel useless as he has kids to take care of ? Who would ever dare say a man he should focus on doing his job well and nurturing his kids before ever thinking of using his abilities for social activities ?
I feel and resent very much the heavy weight of some well-thinking people who would perfectly agree women are just as bright and able than men, but comment with a touch of despise that it is really not a good idea not to focus on what is *really* important, family and job.
I also invite you to reflect on Mark comment
On a more speculative note, on occasion researchers
suggest that men tend to be more interested in enlightenment-style "knowledge for knowledge's sake", while women tend to be more interested in applied fields (at least in CS and math, which is where I've read the research). Wikipedia definitely has interesting social and applied aspects, but the joy of building a compendium of human knowledge is very much an enlightenment-style project, so that might attract a disproportionate number of men.
There it is as well. Women like less knowledge for knowledge sake, and more applied fields.
We mostly enjoy what we have the time and opportunity to like Mark. Most women my age would love do more, but they are currently running after job hours, housechores, lice treatment, purchasing socks for the kids, driving the kids to doctors, to friends birthday, picking up presents for friends birthday, cleaning up, cooking etc... This is very practical, it has to be done. If not done, we see the deep serious look of society considering this should first be done, and done well, and fun or enlightement should come after... when there is time for it.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? All your favorites on one personal page � Try My Yahoo! http://my.yahoo.com
Indeed...
However, among all Wikipedians, there seem to be larger numbers of people under 35 than of people over that age, since for example a 22-year-old woman in most Western countries is at least somewhat likely to not have a family of her own yet, restrictions from traditional gender roles may not be an adequate explanation in many cases.
However, what you say definitely is true. I have invited my own mom a number of times to contribute to Wikipedia. She does have a bit of free time and is a technical writer by profession and very intellectual, but I think the two factors you mentioned together make her less interested or able to contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis. Of course I don't know if this is the same hesitation you might encounter from many people about contributing to Wikipedia, or if it is indeed as I suspect the factors you mentioned.
But I think in general, in the age range I mentioned above, reasons would probably be mostly cultural - many girls here think it's not "cool" to be smart and that you should be exactly like everybody else if you want to be popular. Boys seem to think the same thing, but I think the difference is that, culturally, girls are taught to place a great deal of importance on acceptance by a group, while boys are taught to place a great deal of importance on personal achievements. Thus, schools which we have in the area for highly gifted children have, with no exceptions, a large number of boys but a tiny number of girls.
This is because for many girls who *do* enjoy intellectual pursuits and find time for them, social life is still more important than cognitive challenge, and for those girls who might enjoy intellectual pursuits but hide it because they think that it will make them less "popular" it is in the long run a negative effect.
Thus, more women will be involved with making careers, raising families, and social life, while more men will be involved with making careers, pursuit of intellectual stimulation, and in some cases social life.
While the true objective of any Wikipedian should be to improve the quality of Wikipedia, one major motivation for many is a love of learning. I for one crave the intellectual stimulation provided by the seemingly endless supply of facts provided by Wikipedia, and by the fact that I can also access such supplies in many different languages. I think that, in general, Western society works to foster a lifelong love of learning more in men than in women, and despite the successes of the feminist movement, Western society in general is still very much built on the idea that women should stay home and take care of kids, while men should earn a living or even that men should live only to seek intellectual and physical stimulation.
Mark
On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 19:08:42 -0800 (PST), Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Tim wrote "Why is Wikipedia so repellant to women? I couldn't begin to speculate. Any ideas?"
Might have a couple ones to give. I do not think it is a question of repellance.
You may notice than the under representation is particularly critical for a age over 30-35. You may ask female wikipedians their age to check. Most are below 35. The next question would be "do you have kids ?".
Generally, most women over 30-35 do have kids.
Check on google "free time, housework, women, men" and contemplate results. All studies I know show that at least in european countries, men enjoy a significantly higher leisure time compared to women, essentially due to less time spend on housework chores and children care. This is especially significant as most participants to Wikipedia are educated people, which often implies working people (when over 30) Ask a working mother how she occupies her time in the evening versus how a man occupy his time, and I think it will enlighten you.
This other point is significant as well I think. When you are an already overworked mom, and your family or most friends realise the time you spend over Wikipedia, their comment is at best "you are crazy", and at worse, "you are damaging your family". This is not the type of comment a man having a serious associative activity will get.
When you answer that you also have a brain (and enjoy using it) and have the desire to participate to "big" things, not only family and job, as you feel teaching kids, though a very nice activity is not satisfying you enough as a participation to the grand scheme of things, a woman will often get as an answer "but you can't feel you are useless, look, you have a nice husband and great kids who need you and love you, you are very important to them".
Who would ever DARE saying to a man that he should not feel useless as he has kids to take care of ? Who would ever dare say a man he should focus on doing his job well and nurturing his kids before ever thinking of using his abilities for social activities ?
I feel and resent very much the heavy weight of some well-thinking people who would perfectly agree women are just as bright and able than men, but comment with a touch of despise that it is really not a good idea not to focus on what is *really* important, family and job.
I also invite you to reflect on Mark comment
On a more speculative note, on occasion researchers
suggest that men tend to be more interested in enlightenment-style "knowledge for knowledge's sake", while women tend to be more interested in applied fields (at least in CS and math, which is where I've read the research). Wikipedia definitely has interesting social and applied aspects, but the joy of building a compendium of human knowledge is very much an enlightenment-style project, so that might attract a disproportionate number of men.
There it is as well. Women like less knowledge for knowledge sake, and more applied fields.
We mostly enjoy what we have the time and opportunity to like Mark. Most women my age would love do more, but they are currently running after job hours, housechores, lice treatment, purchasing socks for the kids, driving the kids to doctors, to friends birthday, picking up presents for friends birthday, cleaning up, cooking etc... This is very practical, it has to be done. If not done, we see the deep serious look of society considering this should first be done, and done well, and fun or enlightement should come after... when there is time for it.
Do you Yahoo!? All your favorites on one personal page – Try My Yahoo! http://my.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
But I think in general, in the age range I mentioned above, reasons would probably be mostly cultural - many girls here think it's not "cool" to be smart and that you should be exactly like everybody else if you want to be popular. Boys seem to think the same thing, but I think the difference is that, culturally, girls are taught to place a great deal of importance on acceptance by a group, while boys are taught to place a great deal of importance on personal achievements. Thus, schools which we have in the area for highly gifted children have, with no exceptions, a large number of boys but a tiny number of girls.
In Australia, the reverse is true. Boys are under strong pressure from their peers to avoid academic acheivement. Those who strive are looked down on. Girls have similar sensibilities, but to a lesser extent. I was lucky to get into a selective high school, where I could strive for high marks to the best of my ability without being bullied for it. This inequality shows up in the statistics, see for example
* http://www.wisenet-australia.org/issue43/exams.htm * http://www.wisenet-australia.org/ISSUE44/examgirls.html
I don't think you can say that either girls or boys are more vulnerable to peer pressure, but the form of that peer pressure clearly varies. A quick survey of the list of Australian Wikipedians will tell you that this reversal in academic expectations has not led to a better balance in contributor numbers.
In Australia, as elsewhere in the world, girls and boys concentrate on different subjects. For example, computer subjects are dominated by boys, and girls tend to excel in English.
For some reason the study of computers is dominated by males, whereas the use of computers is balanced. This appears to be true across various cultures. Why? I don't know. At my high school, I'm quite sure there was no stigma against the 3 girls in my year of 180 students who attempted computer studies at the senior level. If you ask the other girls why they didn't do it, they'll tell you they just werern't interested. I suspect you'd get a similar answer from women who don't want to contribute to Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Hello,
Mark Williamson wrote:
would probably be mostly cultural - many girls here think it's not "cool" to be smart and that you should be exactly like everybody else if you want to be popular. Boys seem to think the same thing, but I think the difference is that, culturally, girls are taught to place a great deal of importance on acceptance by a group, while boys are taught to place a great deal of importance on personal achievements.
It always amazes me that there's *any* discouragement for children to learn more and/or be smart. It was downright shocking to me when I moved from Hong Kong to the States and got into high school that being "brainy" isn't a good thing. American high school really isn't a conducive learning environment, you know?
Anyway, I think boys are taught to place a lot of importance on being accepted as well, only their way of achieving that is to score high in the football game or something; and girls are, of course, taught to play social games and get as many admirers as possible etc. Just different methods of gaining acceptance. Or maybe I'm just absolutely wrong because I haven't been in a high school for years.
of the feminist movement, Western society in general is still very much built on the idea that women should stay home and take care of kids, while men should earn a living or even that men should live only to seek intellectual and physical stimulation.
Only Western society? ;)
little Alex
P.S. Since we're on the topic, I'm a girl and I found the Wikipedia idea absolutely fascinating. Of course, I'm also a bit of a geek and never liked being a girl much.
On Tue, 07 Dec 2004, Alex Kwan wrote:
Only Western society? ;)
I think I would agree with that.
When I ran technical training (programming) in the USA, my audience was almost exclusively male.
I ran the same course in Venezuela, where over half the students were female.
Cheers, Andy!
User:Wikiwizzy
Andy Rabagliati wrote:
On Tue, 07 Dec 2004, Alex Kwan wrote:
Only Western society? ;)
I think I would agree with that.
When I ran technical training (programming) in the USA, my audience was almost exclusively male.
I ran the same course in Venezuela, where over half the students were female.
Ah, but did you try it in Japan? Or Saudi Arabia? Western society is hardly the only patriarchal society...
-Mark
Hello,
On Tue, 07 Dec 2004, Alex Kwan wrote:
Only Western society? ;)
Andy Rabagliati wrote:
I think I would agree with that.
When I ran technical training (programming) in the USA, my audience was almost exclusively male.
I ran the same course in Venezuela, where over half the students were female.
*cough* If I may be so bold to presume on your place of origin... The world consists of more than the just the Americas, you know? ;)
Anyway, I came across quite a number of female programmers and computer-related personnel in Hong Kong. It *is* spread out pretty evenly, about half and half. In mainland China, however, nearly everyone in that field is male.
little Alex
Yes, it's a rather sad meme that's infected society. Fortunately, there are some that ignore it, but most people seem to accept the view of education as a boring ordeal that they have to get through in order to get to the "fun things in life!"
--Slowking Man
On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 19:21:19 +0800, Alex Kwan litalex@slashyalex.com wrote:
It always amazes me that there's *any* discouragement for children to learn more and/or be smart. It was downright shocking to me when I moved from Hong Kong to the States and got into high school that being "brainy" isn't a good thing. American high school really isn't a conducive learning environment, you know?
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org