[Gendergap] Great post from a Wikipedian admin

[Sue Gardner]

This might've actually been written by someone here, who knows. I
think it's a good, useful perspective. Worth noting too that she is
one of our success stories: she is sticking around.

Thanks,
Sue

>From The Atlantic:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/what-makes-wikipedia-special-ctd.html

"A reader writes:

I am a Wikipedia administrator, a volunteer position to which I was
elected by community members. I am also a woman. I think that
Wikipedia's lack of female editors is a problem for two main reasons.

First, Wikipedia articles about topics that are typically "women's"
topics is atrocious: these articles are often tiny stubs or are
missing entirely. To give a trivial example, look at the Wikipedia
article on blush. It was created by a user that I believe is male
(though I'm not sure). The photo accompanying the article doesn't even
look to be blush at all. Based on the texture of the product and the
size of the accompanying brushes, it's almost certainly lip gloss.
Would a woman have put that photo up? Probably not. The article is
also insubstantial and lacks footnotes. (The "references" section
consists of three unhelpful links of dubious accuracy.) This is a
product that most Western women use every day, yet the article is an
embarrassment. Just poking through other cosmetics articles, I can
find moisturizer, lip liner, threading--all of similar quality.
Fashion coverage is equally terrible. Look at Christian Lacroix or
Hubert de Givenchy - towering figures in 20th-century fashion with
biographies that are little more than recitations of random facts with
no analysis or citations. Compare these with articles on "male" topics
that are equally trivial: Dale Earnhardt, Jr., homebrewing, Xbox 360.
When it comes to more serious topics, this disparity remains. Based on
samples from one corpus of "important" figures, the male/female ratio
of biographies missing from Wikipedia is worse than that of
Encyclopedia Britannica.

To suggest that women aren't wimps and don't just edit "women's
interest" articles - which many male Wikipedia editors do in
discussions on this topic - is another form of sexism.

It evaluates women's contributions by whether they measure up to male
expectations and interests. (Masculinity is cool, so it's great if
everyone wants to participate. Femininity on the other hand.... Well,
that's just unserious.) Certainly, many of the women editing Wikipedia
don't precisely conform to gender stereotypes, but it is naive to
think that men and women have entirely the same areas of interest.

Second, Wikipedia is increasingly the arbiter of important truths.
These truths are shaped by negotiations on "talk pages," and the
resulting "consensus" version will be accepted as fact (more or less)
by thousands of readers passing by. For women to be absent in these
negotiations means that women's perspectives are not accounted for,
and that readers will be deprived of these perspectives. (And these
perspectives are certainly somewhat different, considering that we
live in a world where gender roles and gender inequality are a part of
day-to-day life.) Would society want only men writing textbooks, or
academic journals, or newspaper articles?

The problem of absent voices is not limited to the lack of
participation by women. It also includes the lack of participation by
those older than the Gen-Y and Gen-X crowd. It includes the lack of
participation by the poor. It includes the lack of participation by
those in the global south, or those who are not internet-connected. It
includes the lack of participation by ethnic minorities. It includes
the lack of participation by people who are not tech-savvy.

Wikipedia is beginning to try to remedy these problems by doing
outreach and by simplifying the editing interface to attract a broader
range of editors. Perhaps this will be enough. Wikipedia's culture,
however, can at times be male-centric and insular. Thankfully, I have
never been harassed (much) based on my gender. But, for example, an
editor with whom I frequently collaborate used to maintain a gallery
of hot chicks in bikinis as a subpage of his userpage. It was
ultimately deleted after a deletion discussion, but he was totally
oblivious to the fact that things like that create an environment
where women do not feel welcome. I'm not sure if top-down initiatives
at Wikipedia will be able to remedy the lack of female participation,
considering broader issues of Wikipedia culture."





--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

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415 816 9967 cell

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