Women in many areas of IT get an earful when they
put forth expert opinion. They speak up and then get
pounded down by a few death-eater trolls whom
nobody has the guts to tell to shut up.
It makes it hard to become an entrepreneur or manager
or CIO, when your credibility and even your personality
is immediately questioned by some troll at every level
of your career, yet nobody calls the troll into account,
and the troll's arguments are considered legitimate.
Questions about a woman's personality, motives,
and even family planning decisions are considered to
be appropriate subjects for discussion.
If a woman speaks out about this unethical treatment,
she's considered to have caused the problem herself,
and therefore she doesn't have management
potential, isn't a team player, and should consider a
different career path, maybe in desktop/customer support.
Why would women put themselves forth as experts on
Wikipedia, in *writing*, when they get smacked down when
they speak up as experts at work?
An IT man puts himself forward as an expert when he does good
work, very few people give him a hard time, it's usually accepted on
its own merits. An IT woman puts herself forward as an expert
when she does good work, and a few insecure guys on the
team will stand up and challenge her publicly and discredit
whether her work was actually all that good. And they'll insult
her personality while they're at it. I've seen this happen. A lot.
Not many guys are insecure death eaters, probably less than
1 in 20, but this is enough to cast suspicion on women who
are doing well. And the men who listen to the insecure guys
and their 'locker room bravado' should know better,
and tell the insecure guys to grow up or shut up. Kind of like
telling gay bashers to shut up, but they'd be telling
women bashers to shut up, no difference.
So the question becomes why would women want to put
themselves down in print as experts, when at work they get
verbally, emotionally and physically intimidated, and at the
very least are frequently technically ostracized to the work
that the guys aren't interested in doing, and usually only get
assigned to the interesting work as an "assistant" to help a guy
that isn't able to do his work himself, even though she's a
'programmer' with experience, not an 'assistant programmer.'
These are not experiences that create the confidence to
put one's neck on the line by contributing to Wikipedia,
which is read by everyone in the world. Imagine the
number of trolls that would suddenly appear in your life!
Men aren't usually subjected to this treatment, so it
makes no sense for them to say that this doesn't happen.
I've seen it, experienced it, and heard men over
and over give weird reasons why unethical treatment of
women in the workplace is acceptable and reasonable,
and is usually the woman's fault anyway.
Notice this is not called 'sexual harassment'. This is
unethical treatment of women in the workplace. Some
companies (CSC, SAIC) have unofficially defined this
behavior as 'hazing' like it's some sort of fraternity and
if you don't pass then you don't belong at that company.
Of course, when you're old like I am, I'm not afraid to
tell the trolls to just shut up and stop treating women
as if they were too psychologically confused to
vote, own land or hold a job, do great work and
get recognized, paid, and promoted for it.
And I'm not afraid to say what I've seen, I'm
prepared for the people who don't want to
hear unpleasant realities to object and attack
me personally. I'm speaking of real events that
happen frequently and of a decades-old culture that
looks the other way when women are treated in
humiliating and unethical ways.
Somebody is probably going to post that I'm old and
frustrated. My answer is "No - I'm older, wiser, more
experienced, and unafraid of trolls."
My suggestion: We should have a women's "Post to Wiki"
month and see what happens. As a measure of support
by the IT world out there, any whiners or complainers
will immediately be asked by their management and
peers whether they are contemplating leaving work
to get married and have children.
- Susan Spencer Conklin
On 06.02.11 23:09, KIZU wrote
>
> In my observation, German female editors tend to (or not care of)
> using Benutzer (user as male) to mention themselves in their writing,
> but French editors seem to stick to call themselves Utilisatrice (user
> as female).
>
We need to get away from "I don't know any who are bothered so this
is not a problem." I grit my teeth each and every time I have to
write "Benutzer:WiseWoman". In German I am a Benutzerin. This defining
the normal to be male, the abnormal to be the female is very off-putting
to *some* women. I am an editor and I care.
Go read Gert Brantenberg's "Daughters of Egalia" for a text written
entirely in the feminine in English/German/Norwegian and then tell me
that language is not gendered.
>
> Besides that, in feminism it has been pointed out addressing
> explicitly someone female as such when their gender/sex is not a
> matter is a sort of discrimination (the earliest mention was iirc
> Barkoff 1968 in a study of English linguistic). It's no simple
> question if we should make it clear whether a user is male or female.
>
It needs to be a preference. I mean, it's software, let it sort out
how I want to be addressed! In general, I prefer to be thought of as
a competent person first, and then have my gender noticed as an
afterthought, if at all. But to keep in-your-facing me and calling
me by a male noun when I am not male is just irritating to me and
others.
In reply to Erik Moeller:
>>>>
>>>> I am wondering:
>>>> - Are there people on this list affected by this? If so, how do you
>>>> feel about it - how important would it be to you to get this fixed?
I think we need charm school for admins first, and gender sensitivity
training as a much more urgent item on the list. But while you are
overhauling MediaWiki, just get it to be sensitive to modes of address
>>>> - Are there other examples of discriminatory language (or interfaces)
>>>> that are built into the software?
Not exactly the software, but the "rule" that Lemmata are only in the
male (like "Professor") and deletion of articles that specifically
address the issues involved in the female-of part (such as
"Professorin"), or the deletion of categories such as "Cartoon
Superheros (Female)" gets really irritating.
In German we have "Benutzerkonto" - why not "Benutzungskonto"?
"Tour für Leser" could be "Lese-Tour" and
"Tutorial für Autoren" "Tutorial für Schreibende"
Cheers,
--
WiseWoman
WP:DE, WP:EN, etc. etc.
Hi, I'm Dan Jacobson, website manager for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_TG_Butterfly_Garden
TG stands for Transgender, so that brings in "just how do you define
gender? by ID card? by DNA?" etc.
But never mind that. Indeed, in the nerd-most caverns of computer
science I too notice the developers are almost all currently (or
formerly!) males.
I accept the fact and expect that in 100 years, brain anatomy science
will tell us why that is.
A couple reactions to the recent story that were printed in the today's edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opinion/l06wiki.html
To the Editor:
In “Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List” (front page, Jan. 31), a number of reasons are offered to explain why women constitute only an astonishing 13 percent of Wikipedia contributors.
Today women earn 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees, 61 percent of the master’s degrees and, as of 2009, a majority of doctorates in the United States. It is inconceivable that this well-educated majority should be largely absent from the world’s most popular interactive encyclopedia project.
Organizations like the Women’s Media Center, the OpEd Project and Women’s eNews have long argued that women’s voices are too scarce in mainstream media. Research indicates that women make up just one third of the top 100 syndicated columnists in the United States, and just over one-third of full-time staff at daily newspapers.
The inclusion of women’s expertise on Wikipedia is vital not just for the sake of fairness, but because without such representation, the whole of society loses the experience, knowledge and perspective of over half the population.
We must join together to encourage women to participate more actively in this public forum.
Linda Basch
President, National Council
for Research on Women
New York, Jan. 31, 2011
•
To the Editor:
Regarding your article about Wikipedia:
Oh, please. The reason women don’t contribute to Wikipedia is that we have more pressing things to do. I would love to elaborate, but I have to finish the laundry, pay the bills, feed the cat, clean the apartment, and do the meal planning and grocery shopping before I head off to work.
Alice Henry Whitmore
New York, Jan. 31, 201
###
Steven Walling
Fellow at the Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Amy Roth <aroth(a)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(a)sarahstierch.com> <sarah(a)sarahstierch.com> Reply-To: Increasing
> female participation in Wikimedia projects <gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org><gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org> To:
> gendergap(a)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-wiki…
>
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gendergap mailing listGendergap@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
>
> /
>
> --
> 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
Hi all, I guess it's my turn for an introduction. I'm Karen and yes, I too
am both female and a Wikipedian. I leave near New York City and am active in
the Wikimedia NYC chapter, where I sometimes refer to myself as the token
female (though I'm not actually, but sometimes it feels like it). I've been
worrying for a good while now about what exactly keeps women turned off from
Wikipedia, and I think there's a couple of factors. To quote from a post I
made on another website about this topic:
*The gender gap on Wikipedia is one of my pet peeves. It's real, it's
undeniable, and it's only partially in our control, I think. Wikipedia can
be a fighty place, no doubt. To stick around there can require you to be
willing to do the virtual equivalent of stomping on someone's foot when they
get in your face, which a lot of women, myself included, find difficult.
Even more important to this issue, I think, though, is that it can require
you to judge your own competence and decide it's high. If I might draw gross
generalization here for a moment, imagine the following scenario:
You're wandering around Wikipedia, and you come across the Friendship
Bracelet article. Shock! You actually know a lot about friendship bracelets,
and you can fill in a lot of the obvious gaps in the article with what you
know! Do you:
a) Fill in those gaps. This isn't controversial information, after all!
b) Think about it, then decide that probably if it were that easy, someone
else would already have done it, and therefore you are likely to be missing
something about how this whole thing works
Did you pick option A? You're a bit more likely to be male. B? Odds are on
the side of you being female. No, this isn't across the board. I know plenty
of people who cross those categories. But my sense is that this slight
tendency of women to doubt their competence, coupled with the undeniable
gatekeeping problem of experienced Wikipedians reverting just that sort of
shouldn't-be-controversial-but-they-put-it-on-MY-article! edit, adds up to a
repulsion factor.
Women I know on Wikipedia often fall into one of two groups: those who will
take you on, any time any place; and those who grind away in
behind-the-scenes areas, copyediting articles, populating maps, cleaning up
licensing rationales, and doing other largely-uncontroversial things. There
seem to be more men who cover that middle ground, the ground where there's
no fear of doing something noticeable but also no fear of talking back to
someone if necessary.
Again, I hasten to point out that this isn't true of everyone, by far. But
as Kat Walsh wrote in an essay on the topic, it seems like it's less that
Wikipedia isn't welcoming specifically to women and more that active,
full-spectrum Wikipedianism is fitted best by certain personality types, and
for some reason there seem to be more men who slot neatly into that type
than women.*
Those are my logical thoughts, but those of you who know me might remember
that there is one, more illogical, thing that gets under my skin more than
almost anything else: Wikipe-tan and her short skirt and thigh-high
stockings. Why, WHY is it ok that we even joke about that being our
"mascot"? An overtly sexualized, large-breasted woman who people regularly
draw in bikinis and maid costumes? I mean, I know Wikipe-tan is not actually
The Problem. But she's the most egregious example I think we have of the
sort of unconscious "boyzone" culture that permeates a lot of collaborative
sites these days. It doesn't even occur to a lot of men that that could be
off-putting. They certainly don't mean it to be off-putting. And they're a
little wounded when someone points out that, well, it *is*.
Ok, I've ranted enough for now. I cede the floor.
-Karen
User:Fluffernutter
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-wik…
"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
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Lvova asked in reply to my suggestions:
>> 1. Ask chapters to compete to nurture the greatest number of female
>> administrators;
>
> Why do you think that chapters has a right to influence it?
It is not just a right but a responsibility for every single one of us
who cares about improving the quality of the Foundation's projects to
take a stand in support of solutions to the most serious problems
facing them. The number of active English Wikipedia adminstrators was
down 12% in 2010 (from 869 to 768), compared to down 8% in 2009 and
down 6% in 2008. Last year, the time to archive sections on WP:AN/I
was halved. How do you think that affects the ability of
administrators to resolve disputes in the ways that produce the best
outcomes for contributors? I have asked senior Foundation officials
to address this problem for at least a year now, and I was given
assurances that attempts would be made to address the issue which I am
not entirely sure have been upheld. If we can't count on the
Foundation and leadership to do anything about the most serious
problems, then the responsibility falls even more heavily to the
volunteer community.
> What do you think about gender check on the vote page and sock puppetry?
One of the many reasons I like to edit logged out is because people
treat me on a gender neutral basis most of the time. When people try
to improve the encyclopedia with a gender-ambiguous pseudonym, sexism
and gender bias issues are less likely to arise. When I was in high
school, I was a member of a puppeteer troupe as well as the debate
team. I knew that there was a stigma attached to forensics, but I
never expected that people would try to attach a stigma to
puppetteering. If it were up to me, all disputes would be resolved
through anonymous review, through a combination of flagged revisions,
pending changes, and offline editing. I am glad that members of this
list have decided to use Meta instead of the Strategy wiki for
proposals because the Strategy wiki administration insisted on
implying that limiting anonymous editing could improve the quality of
the encyclopedia. Not only do the statistics firmly disagree with
that implication, but limiting anonymous editing could make things
substantially more difficult for female editors, given the reality of
the current editing culture.
Towards that end, I have created
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_increasing_female_editors
-- please, everyone, have a look and feel free to improve, correct,
move things back and forth from the Uncontroversial and Controversial
sections as you believe more correctly reflects their status (please
include a link to the rationale) and most importantly: please add more
ideas! I have probably missed some idea proposals, although I did
include replacing Wikipe-tan with Puzzly.
>> 2. Bring all the articles on birth control to featured status;
>
> A scientific article vs phorums? :) In a scientific article will be
> information about physiology, statistic from different countries, but
> willn't features of different maternity hospital, so how can article
> may be more attractive in this topic?
I do not understand these questions, Lvova. Please consider using
automatic back-translation (e.g. use Google translate to convert your
questions from Russian to English and then back to Russian) to make
sure you are asking the questions you are trying to ask.
> And about other 8 points - I'm a woman and I don't understand how it
> related to gender and how it can help at all.
Don't worry, both men and women often find my proposals difficult at
first, until they spend sufficient time thinking about them. Usually
the more time people spend thinking about my proposals increases the
esteem in which they are held. I hope my explanations are clear and
persuasive. Please tell me which parts aren't and why they aren't if
they aren't.
Did anyone else notice that Richard Stallman wrote in support of Gnash
in Huffington Post this past Monday?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-stallman/protect-your-friends-prot_b_…
-- I hope Erik will withdraw his objections to Gnash for speex audio
upload. They are in stark contrast to Mediawiki's support of Java and
Commons' support of PDF formats, which are certainly more encumbered
in practice. How can we expect to attract mothers and other educators
to the wiktionaries for beginning language learning when they are so
far behind commercial offerings?
Best regards,
James Salsman
Pretty sure the "it's your gender's fault" comes from someone
commenting on my article which seemed to get a lot of really hostile
comments. It's tough in 400 words to convey the nuance of centuries of
power and gender struggles. I enjoyed reading Barbara's take on it.
Jessamyn