Joi Ito has a post today observing that the Wikipedia community (surprisingly, I might add) has a more equivalent ratio of men to women than might be expected:
Wikipedia seems much more gender balanced than the blogging community. I know many people point out that ratio of men at conferences on blogging and ratio of men who have loud blog voices seems to be quite high. I wonder what causes this difference in gender distribution? Is it that the power law aspect of blogs is inherently more competitive and appeals to the way men are "trained" in society? Or is it that we're just talking to the "head" of the blog curve and that the more interesting blogs are actually by women in "the long tail"? Or is it something about Wikipedia that attracts powerful women?
Re: the last question, well, yeah, I'd like to think so. ;) But seriously, I'll be keeping an eye on this discussion; although I'm seeing the surfacing of some assumptions that lean toward essentialism (see the comments), it benefits me as an internet researcher to know what the perceptions are and perhaps to hear from some of the women in the Wikipedia community themselves.
Women and Wikis
This post got me thinking about feminism and wikis, and whether or not wikis might be used to serve a purely feminist agenda.
Considering the feminist critiques of other liberatory movements--such as Civil Rights--we might wonder what it would take to get a thumb's up from women on wikis. The argument I've heard some feminists make against the Civil Rights movement was that the attitude was, "Let's focus on liberating black men, and women will follow," or "Let's ignore the gender difference so we can present a united front to The Man" and so on. Indeed, black women who spoke out against the oppression and abuse they were receiving were regarded as traitors to a greater cause. I'm sure bell hooks would object to wikis for the same reasons she objects to post-modernism; "It's easier to give up your subjectivity if you got one."
Of course, Marxism has been challenged for claiming that all that really matters is class, and gender issues are just so much bourgeois claptrap that distracts the proles from the true problem.
Since wikis, properly understood, anyway, do not promote individualism but actually erase it, I don't see how anyone could expect them to promote a feminist agenda. Of course there are women using wikis; however, since a wiki doesn't necessarily foster any particular ideology except its own. Evaluative comments in general are likely to be revised and only "objective facts" or moot points remain. Indeed, any hint of subjectivity would be as alien in a wiki as the same sort of thing in an encyclopedia or technical manual. Still, there is just as much cultural contest going on; one simply has to read between the versions.
If one argues that objectivity ought to be always already in quotation marks, and that any attempt at "objectivity" is necessarily oppressive to women, then that rules out wikis as the feminist killer app. However, if you turn that around and use wikis to show how they provide opportunities for everyone, under the cover of anonymity, to wrestle with the definitions of our society and culture, then I can't help but see a great potential for women there. While true objectivity is of course impossible, one must raise the question, "Well, whose objectivity is it, anyway?" Wikis make that question as difficult to answer as questions of authorship.
A few representative entries:
Judith Butler
Simone de Beauvoir
Helene Cixous
There is, of course, some subtle endorsement going on here (just the fact that there are such well-developed entries on these important women is its own testimony).
The entry on Womyn is particularly intruiging.
I also find feminazi interesting, particularly the last comment:
In the early 2000's many conservatives became irate that George W Bush would be 'compared with Hitler', an ironic twist considering the rampant adoption of the term feminazi by so many conservative radio talk show hosts.
essentialism: rampant, eek!
i just commented my 2cents there (comment #14), pointing out that it's hard to relate the wikimedia model to most instances of wiki-use. it depends on how the software is configured, the subject matter, and the social norms, how the documents are edited, and who knows what else! wiki is a blank page...
i think one of our earliest discussions was about girls and wiki- and it seemed to me that there weren't alot of women using wiki software in general(?)
it would be better to focus on wikipedia itself, and what 'works' on wikipedia to have such a gender-balanced space- else we end up making broad-stroke generalizations about women who are more suited to anonymous work. (!bah!)
i think it'd be better to replace the word 'wiki' with wikipedia, the entire dicussion works better, for me anyway.
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the illusion of progress: http://nearlythere.com
The Wiki is the Wikipedia
As far as I'm concerned, wikipedia is the wiki. The term "wikis" refers most appropriately to pages within the Wikipedia. Other web sites may have wiki-like elements, but only wikipedia espouses the true wiki way. Many people bandy the term "wiki" about with little knowledge of the wiki way; indeed, I know at least one scholar who cites Microsoft Sharepoint as an example of a wiki (and no, it's not who you think).
Just the fact that someone would say "a wiki for women" or "a wiki for Republicans" or the like seems to betray a misunderstanding of what wikis are all about. Wikipedia represents the pure wiki consciousness and all other websites claiming to be wikis are but pale imitations; more a product of affectation than anything else.
The wiki way is to de-centralize control of a website to the point where the only possible content is locally-produced and contested content. Every page in such a wiki is a point where consensus has been reached--but always on a temporary basis. Wiki consciousness is the exact opposite of false consciousnesses, which confuses us into thinking there are such things as individuals or that ideas are private things.