[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Wed Nov 22 21:12:31 UTC 2006

On Nov 21, 2006, at 6:55 PM, Fastfission wrote:

> 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.

It has been shown that we are eager to accept women in leadership  
positions. I support encouragement of women but not discouragement of  
men.

Fred