[WikiEN-l] Feminist agenda (was Arbitration progress report #6)

Fri Feb 27 10:07:30 UTC 2004

Mark wrote:

> Perhaps it shows my political leanings, but I don't really like that
> approach.  Certainly we should have all opinions represented, and if
> certain opinions are only represented by women, then we should have
> women represented.  But we should represent all opinions, not based on
> simple categorizations like gender, race, etc.---you can't assume that
> someone has certain personality or characteristics because they're
> female, or male, or hispanic, or whatnot (certainly most people I know
> offline don't follow the stereotypes, and many fit 'opposite' roles
> better).  As far as wikipedia goes, things like inclusionist vs.
> deletionist, pro- vs. anti-banning, etc., are all more relevant
> distinctions by at least an order of magnitude.
>
> So if there's a woman on the arbitration committee (or multiple women),
> it should be because of who they are, not just because we wanted to
> throw a token woman on there.  Which, fortunately, is how Wikipedia
> normally works---I often can't tell if someone is male or female until
> it gets mentioned long after I've interacted with them for a while, and
> there's some surprises (for whatever reason, I thought that evercat was
> female, and that anthere was male).

Generally I agree.  I don't want to see a token woman either (or a token
anyone else).  But I think Wikipedia has suffered in the past from an
invisibility of women, it's only recently that I've noticed more women
around, and I think the (possible) lack of female input in the arbitration
committee is a shame.  But that said, it's not something I'm going to bang
on about.

> And, FWIW, we allowed *everyone* on a committee who wanted to be on
> one.  So at the moment the reason there are no women is because no women
> volunteered.  If someone wants to volunteer, male or female, we could
> use an extra member to keep the numbers at the right level, so talk to
> Mr. Wales asap. =]

At least two women, Angela and I, /were/ available for the arbitration
committee.  Both of us expressed a preference for mediation but an
availability for arbitration.  Jimbo went with our preference and that's
fine, but since Alex pointed out the apparently all male arbitration
committee I've thought that this is an issue that should be addressed if
possible.  If UC is firm on leaving the committee this seems a good
opportunity.  Any woman out there want a job?  No pay, lots of hassle, but
the potential for an occasional warm fuzzy feeling inside.

--sannse