[Gendergap] Women and Wikipedia by Barbara Fisher

[Amy Roth]

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Amy Roth <aroth at wikimedia.org> wrote:

>
>
> -------- Original Message --------  Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Women and
> Wikipedia by Barbara Fisher  Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:32:57 -0500  From: Sarah
> Stierch <sarah at sarahstierch.com> <sarah at sarahstierch.com>  Reply-To: Increasing
> female participation in Wikimedia projects <gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org><gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org>  To:
> gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org
>
> Yes, some women have chosen not to make contributions for various reasons
> or lack of interest, we all know that. But, I also won't fall for the
> concept that it's "our fault" (as a woman). I also think it's funny that
> people really do believe women don't have interest in "the facts."
>
> Surprises me when female involvement in liberal arts studies are growing,
> for example, check out museum industry - an industry that is dominated by
> women.  The majority of history classes I take are now full of women, and
> women's involvement in the sciences continues to grow as well. Again, it
> really surprises me that people think women aren't in it for the facts.
>
> But, perhaps the fact that I don't read studies on that stuff says
> something.  :)
>
> I'd really like to start branching out into the internet and offline
> communities to see what womens thoughts are.  I think we should seriously
> consider interviews or a more experience oriented research study about those
> who identify as females and what their experiences are - why and why they
> don't "do" Wikipedia. I think it'd shed a lot more light than numbers and
> non-sourced quotes. I will gladly assist in forming a research team for
> this.
>
> Feminist "bulldust." Charming!
>
>
> On 2/4/2011 4:19 PM, Joseph Reagle wrote:
>
> On Friday, February 04, 2011, Steven Walling wrote:
>
>  Joseph Reagle's op-ed explains this argument further I think: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in-wikipedia/open-doesnt-include-everyone
>
>  I think that argument is often implicit, though, I haven't heard it expressed explicitly by any Wikipedians. *But* you can find plenty of examples of this argument explicitly in response to the NYT's article itself.
>
> For example, on the rather huge set of comments on a "anti-genderist" site:
>
>
>  It makes me happy to know that men are dominating the internet and women have absolutely no excuses. What are they going to do? Silence men to ensure equal representation?
>
>  Or elsewhere:
>
>
>  The NYT article below sees everything but the obvious in the fact that few women contribute to Wikipedia: That men are more interested in facts and women more interested in socio-emotional relationships. Men and women are the same, you see: Feminist bulldust. The fact that Wikpedia is voluntary and open to all DEMONSTRATES that men and women have inherently different interests. There is no oppressive "patriarchy" refusing to hire them
>
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>  /
>
> --
> Sarah Stierch Consulting
> Historical, cultural & artistic research, advising & event planning.
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
>
http://www.sarahstierch.com/
>

I second Sarah's proposal to research why women don't contribute to
Wikipedia. I have some ideas as to how we can do this using social media to
branch out and evaluating email threads to look for repetitive themes.
Because the opposite of the negative does not necessarily equal the
positive, it is also important to look at the converse of that question, so
we ask:
What makes women contribute to Wikipedia?

I have a second thought to chime in here. We have strong evidence to believe
that the limited diversity of WP editors limits the content of Wikipedia and
we know that new articles are not being created at the rate they were 3-4
years ago. Is it possible that the limited content has an effect on the
editors who participate? For example, suppose a potential woman editor wants
to work on an article about Charlotte Ray, the first black woman lawyer. But
there is not even a stub for Charlotte, so our editor tries to create the
article, but it is immediately tagged for deletion for notability reasons.
Having heard from many new editors, it is incredibly common that the initial
contact with Wikipedia is that their article is deleted. I'm proposing that
existing content is limited by the ideas of what the majority of the current
community believes is notable, and it is difficult for new editors to earn
the reputation within Wikipedia to influence this. So in effect the current
content is limiting what new editors can contribute, and I suspect this is a
major stumbling block for new women editors

-Amy
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