[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Sat Nov 25 17:38:04 UTC 2006

Stan Shebs wrote

>The 
> hazard of asserting that women editors have something similarly 
> distinctive to bring to WP, by virtue of gender alone, is that one is 
> playing right into the stereotype of "women's topics" or "female 
> viewpoints", and risks creating a sort of "pink collar" ghetto in WP 
> that new female editors would be subtly (or not-so-subtly) steered towards.

The argument is broken.

Sure, creating the editorial equivalent of traditional newspapers' Women's Pages is not only a generation out of date and patronising, it is nothing anyone with WP experience would want anything to do with.

But WP is a voluntary organisation, first and foremost. Discouraging women in any way is shooting ourselves in the feet, big time. Not just because slant in topic coverage will be harder to correct. But because women are (on average) better quality volunteers. Why else did we elect Angela and Anthere to the Board?

Charles

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