Hi Susan, hi Miguel,
I agree with Susan that you have to be very, very careful using "women are like this, men are like that" stereotypes, and I believe that most statements in Miguels list are untrue (thank you anyway, Miguel, it was a thought-provoking impulse and interesting to read). If some of them are true, they are true not due to "the nature of women". Instead, they are self-fulfilling prophecies: because these stereotypes exist, women are socialized to comply with them, and so they become true, and so the stereotypes continue, and so they continue to be true...
So I do think that there is a chance that reworking the interface might help! If little girls get puppets, and boys get computers, and a lot of people tell the little girls that they are more interested in people and flowers than in programming and expect them to behave accordingly, and provide excuses if they are not good with computers (while they tell the little boys to just go figure it out), chances are very good that there are a lot of women out there who would benefit very much from a wysiwyg-editor. Including me, my mother and my sister, by the way.
It's just important that this is not because "women just are like that", but because we live in a society that makes them like that.
Best, Lena
#2 --> Has a woman *actually* told you that she won't post to Wikipedia because she finds the interface too difficult? You're proposing that women don't want to post as experts because they don't want to be an expert in using a complex interface. Because of a deficiency with women, they don't want to become experts with a system that would allow them to post their expert opinion. I sense a catch-22 argument here. Reworking the Wikipedia interface is not really addressing the problem.
Another reason why "women don't want to ____ because ______" We should have a Wiki page on these bizarre reasons. If we put them in a long list it might not help anyone, but it might be humorous. We could just refer to reason #1054 or #782 or #11659 with links to the Wiki page. Good for a laugh. Women could post any new funnies, like "women aren't as obsessive about their work as men are". This might become the most popular set of pages on Wikipedia. Of course, it would probably attract trolls. So let's not.
To have a serious response to the problem, let's have a 'Women Post to Wiki' month, and have a banner about it on every Wiki page during the month. It validates that the world community accepts women as experts, and invites women to post who may have thought about it before, but didn't. I love that Google has different logos every day. Wiki can have a different logo for that month.
- Susan Spencer Conklin
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