[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Wed Nov 22 01:55:24 UTC 2006

On 11/21/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> I suspect the cause is simply that women have something else to do
> with their time that they enjoy more. However, I also suspect enough
> women will edit, that "women's subjects" will eventually be
> adequately handled.

Without meaning it to be a big point in this issue, I just want to
point out that "Oh, women probably have better things to do!" has been
a rationale to dismiss evidence of non-equal participation for a long,
long time. Like, "Oh, but women get to know the joy of motherhood,
which is far more exciting than politics or a good career," it sounds
like a compliment on the surface of it but it usually masks explicit
or implicit acceptance of a limiting status quo.

I'm not trying to imply anything about Fred's personal views on this,
but I just want to point out that I'm not sure this a fruitful
approach and it is one with pretty bad precedents.

I think it is probably very likely that most of Wikipedia's editing is
done by males, and I find it inconceivable that this wouldn't effect a
slant in the editing. That being said, I am not sure I know where the
"problem" lies, if we decide that it is a problem, and I am not sure
there is any sort of easy fix. I suspect that editing regularly on
Wikipedia caters primarily to activities which are often branded as
"masculine" in U.S. culture (aggressiveness, boldness, assertiveness,
argumentitiveness), and that would be something without an easy fix
(and its possible that any fixes would go directly against the
unplanned, unmanaged wiki spirit). But I don't know.

FF