[Gendergap] Why do we want more women on the Wikimedia Projects?( was: Introduction and some thoughts)

[Daniel and Elizabeth Case]

  The fact that people would make a judgement calls and declare that women are into editing fashion articles, etc, is really bizarre to me. The first articles I ever edited were about European new wave bands, nor have I ever edited an article about make-up, children, "women's issues" or soap operas ;)

  Sara, I wasn't declaring this, just following up on some observations the NYT article that prompted the creation of this list made (an observation that at least one female editor on the fashion project, as the diff I posted with it, seems to share). I don't expect any new editor on the project to focus on any specific topic area determined by immutable personal characteristics (though of course some will; that's human nature); many female editors I know (you included, as I learned sitting next to you all day at the National Archives) have as diverse an array of editing interests as I do. But, I would imagine, a higher percentage of female editors would probably result in more attention being paid to some otherwise neglected areas where the pool of informal expertise off-wiki has more women in it than men. Just as lifting the PRC block would bring more editors with some degree of knowledge to China-related topics (though that, of course, we can't really do anything about).

  I would probably also posit that, currently, the overlap between women who thrive within the Wikipedia community and women who would primarily want to contribute primarily in the aforementioned topic areas is probably fairly small.

  Daniel Case
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