[Gendergap] Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects

[Steven Walling]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Susan Spencer <susan.spencer at gmail.com>wrote:

> Oliver makes a very good point about
> statements regarding 'men think _____'.
>
> Statements of  'women are/do/think _____ '
> are distracting, plus they're usually
> at their baseline, insulting.
> It's the overgeneralization, and the mind-
> reading implicit in these statements
> that render them counter-productive.
>
> The actions recently initiated
> by independent groups
> to invite women to participate
> in Wikipedia are wonderful.
>
> These events announce
> that women are wanted and
> accepted as experts, and will
> be supported as such by
> Wikipedia.
> A successful campaign effort
> could be as conceptually simple
> as a continous PR push to invite
> women are to participate.  No
> need to bog down so much in the
> why.  Do the research, and act
> on it, but go ahead with the
> active recruitment.
>
> All people at their foundation seek
> pleasure and avoid pain (I don't mean
> this in a shallow way).  Letting
> women know that Wikipedia is working
> to make contribution a less-than-painful
> endeavor may prove to be the
> majority of the battle, although it would
> take a campaign that lasts more than a month.
> One month to kick off a year-long campaign is certainly
> appropriate. A year-long campaign is also
> appropriate because we need to reach
> 50% of the population!  The heterogeneity
> inherit in such a large population means
> that many of the results returned from
> studies will apply to one sector but not
> the rest.  Therefore the invitation to
> contribute will most likely be the
> most effective approach.  Any approach
> based on 'women are ___'  will be cultural,
> will be expensive to determine,
> and will apply to subsets of women,
> and not to the majority of
> women worldwide, outside of the
> change in women's status during the
> last 150 years.  It's nice to be able to
> own a business, and it's nice that
> it's no longer legal for a husband to
> beat his wife with a stick (rule of thumb!)
> in most places where I could easily
> travel.
> :D
>
> I'm not saying to cease investigation
> for solutions to Wikipedia's issues.
> The areas of proposed investigation
> are all worthwhile.  And totalled up
> the results will benefit everyone, not
> just women, as the current state of
> these areas are offensive (content)
> disenfranchising (inappropriate editing),
> or barriers to contribution (interface) to
> both men and women.
>
> The historical reasons for the lower percentage
> of women in science and technology
> are mostly the same reasons women aren't
> participating on Wikipedia.  There will
> be a few differences, but on the whole
> moving forward is just as important
> as studying why.  The studying why
> is very expensive, and has been going
> on for decades. Let's just get on with
> it, and put out the PR that we are
> celebrating and requesting women's
> participation as experts on the
> Wikipedia site.
>
> - Susan
>

I could not agree more strongly with everything you said there.

-- 
Steven Walling
Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/attachments/20110219/0a24d6c4/attachment-0001.htm