Yes I totally agree with this. The problem is actually two-fold; we lack the women contributors, and the current notability rules cause us to talk in circles about how to protect new female contributors from being put off by the systemic bias inherent in our internal processes. You don't have to go back that far in time to find women listed as property and not people, even in Western society. "Fauna" is a new one for me though! Writing as a woman is of course different than writing about women. Everyone is welcome to write about whatever they like. We miss the "female gaze" however - it really doesn't matter what the women want to write about, as long as they write. Massively as a large international group they choose to write elsewhere and not on Wikipedia or any of the Wikimedia projects. The question of why not may be simply technical or it could be the off-putting challenge of learning to navigate our notability standards for things that have historically only been academically documented by young white men. Diving into things like the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica shows huge gaps in knowledge as well as amazing detail for things that don't interest us so much today, such as geological survey data. Back when people grew their own vegetables or made their own asphalt that may have been very useful to know, but increasingly the stuff we eat and build with comes from places very far away from us. Sadly, the information we use to build articles about local stuff also comes from farther and farther away.
I was originally coaxed into my first local WLM meetup by a direct invitation on my user talk page. Whether this direct approach that has proven so successful with WLM helps for the gendergap specifically is an unknown, because our group of female contributors to invite is so small. The trick is to make the invitation as informal as possible and as easy as possible to accept. I guess it is easier to think about the concept of local heritage than it is to think about "female living", whatever that may be. The point about diversity is you need to get people's attention so they just add that extra little bit of focus when they are doing their thing. In my case, I like to work on paintings and it takes me much more time, sometimes years, to track down paintings by women, or portraits of women, or paintings that have been in collections located in Africa and other places not in the usual museum or art world circuit. I used to just ignore the hard cases, but now I know I should pay extra attention and make that extra bit of effort. In my small corner of the wikiverse I am slowly tilting the scales from "paintings of women always show nudity" to "paintings of women are mostly portraits". The point is to apply an extra filter to the gaze we all have, to alert us to the female angle or the non-Western angle. The women who do contribute to our projects tend to have other interests than just biographies or anything else gender-related. I think that's normal. On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 12:05 PM, Gnangarra <gnanga...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think the problems not in trying to fix the imbalance in knowledge, > something for which history has big role in what and how information was > even still is recorded. I think the presumption that when we ask women to > edit about women we predispose the assumption that women are only > interested in women and only women can or want to write about them. We > have had a lot of concepts that have improved content about women and they > have focused on getting women to do the contributions. > > sorry Fred to quote as an example > > Women editors might have something to add about nursing and the history > > of nursing that adds gender-specific value, increasing our coverage of > the > > subject. So a workshop at a nursing convention might be valuable. > > > > > What we need to do is shift our train of thought from women can contribute > to subjects about women to providing environments that let and encourage > women to contribute to topics that interest them not us. The same applies > to other "minorities" where the subject being written is less important > than enabling participation. For that we need to consider in broader terms > what is notable, what defines notability, how do we draw in those > intangible knowledge sources to broaden the base for both contributors and > contributions. > > We have the ridiculous case of Indigenous people in Australia being > considered as fauna until the 1960's, so that when an Indigenous person was > written about historically(even now its still applies) that in itself is > significant but we measure the notability of a person based not on the > uniqueness of such but on whether there is sufficient volume of other > works about the person. We have created an inherently bias system that > favours those of colonial heritage with colonial records over those who > dont have that historical privilege, we encourage this as Romaine put its > with a tokenism of participation and expectation of contributions > conforming to maintain that bias. While we do that we dont actually value > the contributor or the contributions nor what else can be brought to the > community. > > > On 7 May 2018 at 17:31, Fæ <fae...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 7 May 2018 at 10:01, FRED BAUDER <fredb...@fairpoint.net> wrote: > > > Women editors might have something to add about nursing and the history > > of nursing that adds gender-specific value, increasing our coverage of > the > > subject. So a workshop at a nursing convention might be valuable. > > > > > > Fred > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > From: Amir E. Aharoni <amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> > > > To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > > > Sent: Mon, 07 May 2018 04:52:31 -0400 (EDT) > > > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems > > > > > > 2018-05-07 9:55 GMT+03:00 Jane Darnell <jane...@gmail.com>: > > > > > >> Amir, > > >> It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read > Romaine's > > >> mail correctly. > > > > > > > > > You had probably read it correctly. > > > > > > Generally, I'm wondering whether direct invitations to women or people > of > > > color (or women of color, etc.) work as they should. Many people say > that > > > they work. They may be right, at least in part. If I understand > > correctly, > > > Romaine says that he has doubts about it, and he's probably right, too, > > at > > > least for some people. > > > > > > I'm just trying to say that diversity is important. How do we reach > it? I > > > don't have very good answers. Probably not "one size fits all". > > > > > > I mean, I want that woman about whom Romaine was speaking to contribute > > her > > > knowledge. I want everybody to contribute their knowledge. Unless I > > missed > > > it, Romaine didn't write what is her expertise, but just for the sake > of > > > the example, let's make something up and say that it's Astronomy. > > > > > > Do I want her to contribute her knowledge about Astronomy? Of course I > > do. > > > Should I tell her that I hope that she contributes her knowledge about > > > Astronomy? I probably should. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.) > > > > > > Do I think that she has something to say about Astronomy that men > don't? > > > Yes, it's quite possible. Should I tell her that? Hmm, I don't know. > > Maybe, > > > maybe not. I think that this is the question that Romaine is trying to > > > raise. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong. > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > > wiki/Wikimedia-l > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > > wiki/Wikimedia-l > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > > Thanks for reminding everyone that we live in the 21st Century, where > > there are plenty of women role models at the top of previously male > > dominated professions, not just nursing. > > > > The Wikipedia community has the most success at correcting gender bias > > by encouraging interested volunteers of any gender to create articles > > which help correct that bias, in all subjects. > > > > Fae > > -- > > fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > > wiki/Wikimedia-l > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > > > > -- > GN. > Noongarpedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page > WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra > Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com > Out now: A.Gaynor, P. Newman and P. Jennings (eds.), *Never Again: > Reflections on Environmental Responsibility after Roe 8*, UWAP, 2017. > Order > here > <https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/never-again- > reflections-on-environmental-responsibility-after-roe-8> > . > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
