Laura Hale, 21/12/2011 21:55:
At the moment, this is to both inform the community the state of female participation on a leadership level, the state of women's participation on WMF projects (the 9% number is meaningless unless properly contextualised) and the state of women's related content by region. [...] Beyond that, the purpose of the list is to create benchmarks for chapters and communities with in the movement to see how they can improve. If we get this information, six months, a year, two years down the line, we can say: Look! We've improved the participation levels of women at New Zealand based meet ups (and at the same time increased male participation levels!). We have more women involved in editing articles about popular Australian women's sports, about Australian literature and about female Australian politicians. In this country, there was not a single woman on the board but now they have one. In Bangladesh, they sent their first woman to attend an international conference and she came back and helped organise events in the country. [...]
I don't know how to find or provide some information useful for benchmarking purposes: the only thing I'd consider important (and measurable) is the total number of female contributors and chapter members. Females are so important in Italian Wikimedia projects and chapter that their role can't be measured and I had never thought of measuring or increasing their /number/ in the board. Anyway, I've added some stats and trivia I like on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/FAQ/Perspectives/Italy , I hope they're somehow useful.
Nemo