[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Sat Nov 25 03:12:39 UTC 2006

Puppy wrote:
<snip>
> 
> Now women's health issues is important, and it would concern me should 
> they be neglected. Blow dryers probably gets neglected for the same 
> reason can opener is a stub - it simply isn't that notable a topic 
> compared to WWII, or menstruation.

I secretly suspect that if it /were/ expanded, it would quickly be
culled as "cruft" - we've had joke articles (eg. European toilet roll
holder, floating around some BJAODN archive) that are longer than the
articles on real-world objects. The more likely (and publically
acceptable) reason why these articles haven't been expanded is lack of
reference materials - what can people write about them that is
verifiable and not original research? Short of advertisements in
long-lost "women's magazines", I doubt that much raw material was ever
produced. /Possibly/ there are reviews by consumer associations, but
they're probably in the realm of pay-access and hence not particularly
friendly...

> This is not to say that improving and expanding such articles is not
> desirable - after all, we wish to be the premier source of general
> information on everything

Well, yes.

> - but it is not due to gender bias, and to imply that it is to me is
> reinforcing the "woman-as-empty-headed-shallow-person".

Claims of gender bias are /rarely/ seen as justified, mainly due to
saturation and desensitisation by female chauvinists who scream "OMG
gender bias" at every available oppurtunity. Sadly, as a result, very
few claims of gender bias are treated seriously, regardless of who is
making them.

> Why all the variations on "menstrual" point to one article is
> probably due to the fact that they are so close to synonymous that to
> split them would be introducing redundancy.

And yet, I've seen cases where multiple similar/synonymous articles that
/could/ be merged exist as disjoint stubs. IMO the best solution is to
merge the articles under one title, but explain the seperate points,
preferably with one sub-heading for each incoming redirect (where
applicable).

> The only subjects of which I am aware which are over-subdivided, if
> you will, are politically or religiously charged subjects. Hence,
> Abortion is an enormous cascade of articles, because people have
> strong views, there is a legal debate, a religious debate, etc - but
> no one is arguing about a woman's menstrual cycle. I could be in
> error, but that is how it appears to me.
> 

Yes, because I suspect that it's very hard for our predominately male
editing population to POV push on something that they feel doesn't
affect them.

-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
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