Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-12/Women and Wikipedia

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Editors may be interested in the 94 missing articles I have listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedia articles/NWHP (National Women's History Project) and the six remaining red-links at National Women's Hall of Fame, although both pages are wholly American centred. Rich Farmbrough, 20:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC).

It's ridiculous to suggest that recruiting women editors will redress imbalances and that we'll suddenly have greater coverage on biographies of women and other 'female-orientated' issues. I've said it before: it's sexist and demeaning to both genders to a) think that women editors ought to be writing about females and/or birth control and/or friendship bracelets and b) that men don't, or can't be encouraged to, write about females and birth control also. I hate the fact that this narrow-minded and segregational viewpoint is alive on a supposedly mature and intellectual encyclopaedia, and that it parades under an "equality" banner. Please! Julia\^talk 07:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Julia! I'm just curious where, in the roundtable, folks suggest that women need to be writing "female-oriented" issues? WikiWomen's History Month actually hopes that anyone, of any gender, will write about women's history. Just curious where your opinion stemmed from! (And for the record: I do write about women's historical figures most of the time, but, perhaps I'm just a rare case!) To be accused of being sexist and demeaning is a painful thing for anyone to hear, and to know that myself, and these four advocates for the improvement of women's history and women's participation in Wikipedia are being called that, is even more hard to take! So I'd love to learn more about what in this article triggered your frustration. I might not be able to address it, but, knowing more about it would be great. Sarah (talk) 13:25, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't in this roundtable necessarily which suggested women ought to be writing about female-orientated topics, but it's been brought up synonymously with the issue of women on Wikipedia many times before. Specifically I was referring to an article mentioned in the Signpost last year, and my response to it: ([1]). Julia\^talk 20:07, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh! And for the record again: I do believe that it's important that women interested in subjects like birth control, menstruation, brassiere, etc - things that many of us have personal experience with - write about them. I do think that in subject areas, like most in Wikipedia, that are written by men, it can be a powerful tool to have an even more neutral article. Perhaps a woman interested in the history of fashion or biology might add other things to an article than a man might. But, I don't think there is any research to prove that, it's just a theory I find interesting =) Sarah (talk) 13:30, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

"It's ridiculous to suggest that recruiting women editors will redress imbalances". Actually it's not ridiculous. As an example, an academic study recently showed that movies that were preferred by women had less coverage on Wikipedia. More women on Wikipedia = more content from a female perspective. Of course that isn't limited to fashion and female biographies. Lots of women on Wikipedia write about sports and science fiction, and lots of guys (like me) write about feminism and menstruation. But either way, its good to get a diversity of voices contributing to the project. Kaldari (talk) 14:21, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Without getting into whether Julia's take on what the Sinpost was saying is spot-on or not, her general observation certainly is. It doesn't take a female editor to make good edits to women's biography articles here, nor should women editors be focusing on "womanly" topics instead of what happens to interest them and what they're most competent to write about. I'm male and feel no partiuclar urge or pressure to write about fatherhood, football and prostate glands. A problem that has been very under-discussed, however, is that women themselves buy into that sort of assumption too often, sometimes to an extreme that produces encyclopedically unhelpful results and doesn't actually do anything to improve the real female influence on and coverage in Wikipedia. It's quite unhelpful, in multiple ways, to create stubs and ill-populated categories that will almost certainly never expand, just to rather robotically include women as a special subcategorization. We do not need an article like Women's hang gliding in Canada or a Category:Women watercolorists, absent compelling reasons under WP:SUMMARY and WP:CATGRS, respectively, to sex-fork this way. [Those are stand-ins for real examples that are just as odd; I don't want to re-start debates about the real ones here.] That women might have some occupation or skill that didn't have something to do with children, sewing and kitchens [I'm writing this with dismissive sarcasm about sexist attitudes, mind you] hasn't been seen as noteworthy for several generations now, at least not in the West. There is no "gee-whiz" factor in the idea of female doctors and politicians and programmers and whatever. When a field has historically traditionally been completely and rather programmatically dominated by one sex or the other, such forks may make sense (at least while the novelty factor still exists for some non-trivial percentage of readers who may seek information on the topic as a topic in and of itself), as perhaps at Men in nursing and Category:Women's ice hockey players. But excessive pursuit of splitting every category and article topic on sex-based lines is quixotic at best, and can be "ghettoizing" (CATGRS goes into this). It's far more important to properly develop and balance exiting articles and categories to have less one-sided coverage, write important missing articles, and overall make WP less of a "sausage party" of nerd-boys, than it is to topically nit-pick for political point-making. I usually get called a sexist for daring to bring this up without having the right "junk" to have a valid opinion on anything to do with women, but my skin is thick and I don't give up just because some people find it easier to get reflexively angry than to examine their own editing priorities critically. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 06:41, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting post. I also believe it's unhelpful to race-fork, as in List of African-American astronauts. But I suspect this belief is politically incorrect, so I will remain an anonymous coward. 63.231.100.76 (talk) 07:52, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm cringing while reading how strongly and polemically I worded my post. Evidently I woke up on the wrong side of the bed; it was early, and just before catching another student-crowded bus into work, and knew I'd probably be elbowed in the face again. I'm sorry! The issue of 'women and Wikipedia' does tend to rile me though. First, I can't help but feel that blame is being apportioned to men, as it is with many traditionally 'feminist' issues. There seems to be a tendency to think that men are somehow responsible for there being a low number of females on Wikipedia; leaving aside historical cultural points about why this might be so, I think the major reason is that most women just aren't interested, or interested enough to stick with it. Second, as I've commented before ([2]), this undervalues the women who are already on Wikipedia and not writing about traditionally female topics. It's like pushing me, and many others, into the male demographic, because we're not serving the feminist cause, as if women's value on Wikipedia could be measured by topic coverage. It only strengthens the stereotyping that women like me have been struggling with. The very fact that the gender gap 'issue' has brewed speeches and roundtables and journalism shouts that women need propped up and supported in something as simple as Wikipedia: not a good way to challenge the "weaker sex" notion, right? I know that if I were not already an editor when the drive to get women on WP came out, it would certainly have put me off becoming one. I wouldn't have wanted to insert myself somewhere as one of the prized, rescued, recruited few, amongst males who may now feel undervalued and resentful because the focus is on how, through no fault of their own, the encyclopaedia isn't 'good enough' because of their demographic, instead of focusing on their enormously worthy contributions that have built this encyclopaedia from the ground up. Third, we ought to be encouraging all diversity. We have a huge Western bias, which I see as far more of a concern, and more of a problem worth fixing, than pushing to have yet more small articles on, say, female authors of borderline notability, just to satisfy some perceived persecution. As unpopular as my opinion will be, I think women need to get over themselves and just get on with it. Reverse discrimination is never admirable, and no one respects it. By pushing this agenda we are creating a gender gap, and it's not about numbers this time. Julia\^talk 20:07, 24 March 2012 (UTC)