[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Wed Nov 22 18:02:38 UTC 2006

On 11/22/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> They could have been theoretical feminists, eh?
>
> And I worked there for almost nine years. No man ever cleaned the
> kitchen, the entire time I was there. Every so often a woman would
> mention a rotating roster, so the same people would not always be
> cleaning the kitchen - but the men always shouted it down. Once we went
> on strike - didn't clean. When the kitchen got too nasty, the men
> started going out to lunch.

They spoiled the experiment.

>One said, the refrigerator in the breakroom
> is starting to smell. I said, why don't you clean it then? He said, I'm
> not the maid. I said, we don't have a maid, who do you think has been
> cleaning the kitchen? And he said, That's right, why don't you clean the
> kitchen? No lie. He was one of the worst offenders though. He belonged
> to some church which believed women should subjugate themselves to men,
> and he had a hard time taking orders from women - not me, he didn't
> report to me, but he did report to a woman. The situation worsened, and
> everyone of the men was complaining. We kept asking, why don't you clean
> it then? And one of the other men said, if we wait long enough one of
> the women will clean it. He was an avowed feminist. Right. And four
> women finally cleaned the kitchen when bigwigs from corporate were
> coming. It seems the men were right - if they waited long enough, a
> woman would do it. I went to the corporate office several times, and
> guess who was cleaning the breakroom? A woman.
>

Haveing seen the kitchens in all male student acomerdation I can well
belive it. If cleaning is left to whoever cracks first it tends to be
the woman who end up doing it. Not sure how this applies to wikipedia
though.

> It is a complex situation, and I think a little off topic. I don't know
> if there is anything here which will illuminate the gender bias and/or
> gender gap which we have on Wikipedia, or give insight as to how to
> approach better balance. Does any of this cause women to value
> themselves less? Do they do "cleanup" because they're used to it?

I don't know the gender of most of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup_Taskforce/Members/Members_by_interest

> Do
> they shy away from ArbCom or B'crat because they are
> non-confrontational? due to gender differences, or societal expectations
> (Pavlovian training)? The email which started this thread talked about
> "women's subjects" such as blow dryers and curling irons, and that was
> written by a female, yes? That's horrifying to me.

The average woman is likely to know more about blow dryers than the
average man (sure there are men with long hair but they are something
of a minority even amoung geeks)

>
> I'm going off to see if Nail polish could use a "woman's touch" - heaven
> forfend I actually put any chemistry into the darn article. (yes this is
> sarcasm, I have no intention of editing Nail polish.)
>

Chemistry mostly covered unless people want to go into details of the dyes.

-- 
geni