[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Tue Nov 28 06:01:15 UTC 2006

On 11/22/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>
>
> Speaking as a woman who does not even own a blowdryer or curling iron, I
> concur with Sarah - the cut is everything. I also am closer to losing my
> temper than at any other time ever on Wikipedia. Keitel, your entire
> email is insulting in the extreme. No one is claiming women handle all
> the "serious" articles and men edit only Beer and NASCAR articles. You
> are taking one tiny stereotype and applying it across the board. I
> personally use a computer, I am a programmer by trade, and have not
> touched a curling iron in 30 years. I know men who won't touch a
> computer. If "most of the women" you know actually have more interest in
> their hair than in current events, history, the rise and fall of
> nations, influential novels, paradigms which have reshaped society, etc,
> all I can say to you is that you need to meet some new women.
>
> --pissed puppy, who doesn't care for stereotypes

I've just read through some of these threads on gender bias and the low
numbers of women in arbcom and WP in general.

Like KC-Puppy, I too am a programmer.  I recall once at a company where I
worked, I was the senior programmer training a new junior programmer who was
male.  The newly hired vice president approached us to discuss a project and
it soon became obvious that he assumed the male programmer was my superior
and that I must be his secretary!

I've regularly experienced this sort of gender-bias attitude in a variety of
settings, and Wikipedia is not exempt.

Now at Wikipedia, even though gender is more hidden behind ambiguous
usernames, there still exists a bit of a boy's club.  Editors who don't know
me or neglect to notice the "This user is a mother" userbox on my user page
often tend to assume the "M" in MPerel likely stands for "Mike" and I get
the accompanying slap-on-the-back attempted male-bonding sort of treatment.
Often, I find it easier to let people assume I am a "dude", though in doing
that, I find myself holding back contributing since I realize of course that
I make quite a mediocre male and fall short of the ability to exhibit the
predominantly-valued male qualities.  For me it's not a matter of being
intimidated (I have healthy self-esteem), but it's just that my outlook and
approach to problem-solving doesn't fit the dominant male-oriented mold, and
I ask myself, why should I waste my time and effort in areas where it isn't
valued?

Occasionally an editor who has discovered I am female dismisses me as an
air-headed ditz.  I was going to provide a link to the most agregious
misogynistic example I personally experienced, but it has apparently been
deleted, perhaps since it outed my presumed location.  Basically I was
mercilessly mocked with demeaning sexist ridicule when I tried to address a
particular conflict on a talk page from what I consider my more female
perspective.

Even without the blatant misogynist trolls, subtle attitudes and assumptions
exist that are often presumptive, demeaning and dismissive of women and
female ways of looking at things. There is a bias favoring male
aggressiveness, although if a female editor exhibits assertiveness she is
often treated and labeled as queen bitch and is summarily harrassed and
persecuted.  I've seen the harrassment that the few prominent females have
endured and frankly it has deterred me from being a more active participant
or from pursuing any official leadership role as I don't see the need to
subject myself to that kind of treatment.  I've been a Wikipedian for years
but I still continue to regularly put off admin nomination offers because I
hesitate to make myself a target.

I think the gender bias problem is bigger (yet perhaps more subtle) than
some think.

~Miri not Mike! (MPerel)