Who is Writing Women’s History?
May 5, 2009
by Judy Silver
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During Women’s History Month, I saw many comments about school curricula being deficient regarding women in part because (with some note able exceptions like Mercy Otis Warren) traditional history books have been written mostly by men. Well, it’s happening again. Today, when our children need to research a topic, where do they turn? Wikipedia. And who is writing Wikipedia? Mostly men. Women make up only 13% of Wikipedia contributors, according to a new survey.
Commenting on the phenomenon to Reuters, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner said:
I know that an editorial initiative is only as rich, and as thoughtful, and as intelligent as the people who contribute to it, right? Wikipedia currently is contributed to primarily by young, male geeks, right? Really, really smart, really earnest kids. I want to broaden that out a little bit. That’s my goal. I don’t worry about that, but I’d like to see more women contribute, I’d like to see more older people contribute. There are people who have spent their entire lives developing expertise and accruing knowledge. I want them to give it back.
Blogger Jen Nedeau
Blogger Jen Nedeau at change.org mused:
Hmm – it seems that we have yet another online example where women are not feeling very welcome to share their ideas, their voice and their intellect. Wikipedia is a naturally contentious site and while I’m sure not everyone – male or female – enjoys an online edit war, it is yet another example of how male dominated the internet space has become. I’m not suggesting there is anyone to blame for this gender discrepancy, but just as the Second Wavers fought for more voices on the Op-Ed pages of major newspapers – it is just as important to have the female perspective of history on sites like Wikipedia that inform millions of people everyday on history, pop culture, politics and geography.
Martha Saxton, associate professor at Amherst College, is one woman who is stepping into the breach, making writing or revising Wiki articles on women in history a requirement of her Women’s History courses.
So what do you think, readers? How important is it that history be written by a gender-balanced crew? How important is the Wikipedia medium as opposed to more academic publications and textbooks? Have you ever written for Wikipedia, and if not why not? What would make contributing more attractive to women?
I guess I would ask who is unionizing women in the work place, especially occupations where women are the vast majority, like clerical workers in the medical industry – talk about some real sweat shops with low pay and terrible benefits. These women don’t have the time and luxary of writing history.
Men are writing about our history because we don’t. Women would rather talk bad about other women who disagree with them or have diffrent ideas and stand back and let men have the say about everything we are saying because we don’t show that we know best about ourselves. If women only could agree to disagree and stand together and work to compromise on issues , it would be amazing what we could accomplish.
Yes it is important for women to contribute to Wiki. If we don’t it just allows one more market place for men to put forth the idea that the men’s view is “the view” when it isn’t even the majority view. I have never contributed to it because I haven’t thought of it. Thanks for bringing it up.
If you want to see what men, left to their own devices, create just look at the corporate media. Do you see any women you can relate to at all? No, they are all fembots, plot devices, sex interest, product placement fashion wearers, etc. That is what happens when females are written, cast, directed, costumed, and edited by men.
If you want more women to contribute to Wikipedia, then it’s the men that have to change, not us. The atmosphere has to be less poisonous to women, and ALL young-male-geek atmospheres are, period.
WE are not the problem, and WE can’t solve it. They must. Whether they will is another matter entirely. And I can’t fault a woman for refusing to go someplace where simply making an edit on a controversial topic will have people making remarks on her body parts that should never have been spoken aloud.
I remind everyone, Jimmy Wales built Dickepedia on the money he made selling his pornography website. When Wales had his Wiki bio written, this fact was somehow missing. After a long struggle by some editors it was grudgingly, step-by-step acknowledged and written in. So TNA, don’t be removing this mention of Wale’s porn empire as you did the first one I posted.
Pornography is filmed rape. Wales became a ‘respectable’ and admired businessman on the rape of women, young girls. He’s a pimp. So I don’t really care what he does over there.
I’ll just keep reminding women who he really is.
Some of his editors are sadists, porn supportes who take out any suggestion of feminism that isn’t “sex-positive’. They worship Susie Bright et al.
Nikki Craft’s bio, Cherly Lindsey Seelhoff’s bio, Melissa
Farley’s bio and other radical feminist bios–they raze. Feminism on WP last I looked is not very different from Jimmy’s old site.
You know that adage: unless we know our history we are doomed to repeat it. That’s why I’m going to keep posting this ‘news’ to TNA feminists.
This is the most active ‘feminist’ topic editor on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia(dot)org/wi.....uriousblue
If you want some idea of the fight feminists have had on WP, read the talk pages for any entry.
Thanks sis, I did not know that about Wikis porn roots and I believe you. However I often go to Wiki when I am not sure of a reference so it is serving a purpose in our society and needs to have a feminine perspective imposed on it because it has influence. We can’t ignore it because the men who invented it are a bunch of twits. The old corporate media have been in the habit of ignoring women consumers and they are about to fall apart because of it. They simply have nothing to sell us. With new computer based media they can tell what articles get hit on and this should change the tone of “women’s content” to content women will pay to consume when previously “women’s content” has simply been anything men say it is. I say we coordinate and drown out the voices of the pigs.
When I was looking up history on wikipedia, I noticed the website ignored the fact that ida Tarbell was opposed to women’s suffrage and listed her as a progressive reformer.
I can hardly believe that people take Wikipedia seriously. History and encyclopedias should be written by professional writers with real credetials and fact checkers. Wikipedia is nonsense.
It is rightly not allowed as a source in educational institutions. And if you find somewhere that it is, grab your kid and run.
Thanks yes Bes. Been there done that. In paper, and now electonic. The blogosphere raged with the fires in 2007. We tried. WP appeals to porn supporters, who have been Jimmy’s fans since the porn site. Holding our noses, some of us went in to set the feminist bios correct. It’s a boys club. We don’t have the pass-appendage.
But rather than lecture me on what I’ve lived, why don’t you gather your posse and get in there. I’d love to see you succeed.
You do not need to take Wiki seriously as a history source to have it be of value. Many times all I want to look up is a cultural reference. I quit watching most movies and TV and so it proves educational. I don’t mean to lecture you. Many times it is not effective to use words to communicate with males, the only language a large percentage of them understand is money and power and the only person they care about is themselves. You need only find a way to deny them money and power and they will respond. This sort of male does not need to be salvaged or reformed but simply stepped over then ignored. Here is a link to an article telling how to cut the TV cable and still see the few shows you like for free. This is how women can take on the media, don’t talk at them, attack their profits. Encourage all women to save money on media by following these suggestions and watch the Media Cartel take notice. http://www.bendbulletin.com/ap.....ory=NEWS01
Let us not forget google, becoming more and more powerful, almost entirely male. Think about it: when is the last time you saw one of google’s “cute” plays on its name that was honoring a woman?
As far as I know, Wikipedia has gatekeepers who put up a big fight on pro-feminist edits of their pages. I have looked at some edit history pages and a pattern emerges where every pro-feminist edit is questioned in the most anal-retentive way or drowned in qualifiers, while the usual anti-feminist claims are allowed through without much comment.
I think it would be interesting to see if the % of women contributors has been going up or down over the past few years. If it is going down, then that indicates a resistance on the part of the gatekeepers, not a lack of interest on the part of women.
Memo to Jen Nedeau & Martha Saxton:
Jen, “gender discrepancy”at WP and Google is not an innocent mistake or an inevitable glitch in “new” technology. Professor, you and your students can go on correcting, editing and revising WP articles ’til the cows come home; your Sisyphean efforts will not stop the bullsh!t from piling up and the hate toward women from reappearing with more vengeance than ever.
The Internet (dating back to ARPANet in 1969), particularly the Web (HTML v1 drafted circa 1990) and related applications, didn’t just suddenly “become” dick-dominated and woman-hating yesterday. Men deliberately have designed and kept it that way. It’s their game. It’s their clubhouse. You don’t have the power or responsibility to change them, as if somehow you could find the right words to reach them, if you can win the latest flame-war, if you just plug in a few more women’s names and voices….
I agree with Janis, insofar as the toxic atmosphere being the creation and thus responsibility of males– though I must add, many are not “young” but merely juvenile, and most are not even “geeks” but simply criminals with the money, connections, sick minds, gall etc. to exploit without conscience.
suggested tips to copy & share:
1.} Wikipedia is not your friend.
It is not free in any sense of the word. (Comments above by Sis plus Karen and Juliette already explain why.)
Boycott Wikipedia completely. The company is an unnecessary evil. Do not link to or cite its articles and especially its administrators and supporters.
You already know that alternatives abound on the Web!
Numerous sites have the same information, often with more useful details, much better writing, and far greater accuracy. Printed books, mags and journals etc. also can be cited the same way; you can link to the author’s site, a book review, an academic paper etcetera.
I give such links and quotations in scores of my blog postings each week with no pain or suffering whatsoever, and half the time, I’ve got one eye open and only two fingers typing. So if I can do it, you can too.
2.} Google is not your friend.
It is not truly free. You pay dearly when you give your time, money and content to Google.
Boycott Google whenever possible. Do not use gmail. Do not post content to YouTube and do not link to YouTube.
YouTube is largely redundant for a lot of political, social, artistic, medical etc. content. Much of the video is re-posted from other sources, such as C-Span for political coverage. Link to those original sources!
Other alternatives to YouTube include Flickr (from Yahoo, a company which admittedly is no angel), Vimeo, http://www.guba.com, and http://www.revver.com among many other free networks for sharing video and commentary, with popular widgets, plug-ins, playlists to use in combination with WordPress, TypePad, iTunes, Facebook, Blinx– i.e., options just like you get with Google’s YouTube, except you get to decide if the file-sharing community suits your goals and concerns.
Discourage use of blogger.com, blogspot.com and related services because of Google’s pattern of censorship of bloggers such as feminists and PUMAs when those women’s political views didn’t meet with the approval of Eric Schmidt and his partners, who continue to enjoy a quid pro quo relationship of financial gain and key positions with Obama’s administration.
Alternatives to Google’s search engine? Sure! The Google Gang aren’t any geniuses who invented web searching, and Google is nothing special– except in gullible minds susceptible to the corporation’s advertising and gimmicks.
Resistance is easy.
Your choices include ask.com as well as the ol’ multi-engine hotbot.com (your choice of Yahoo, MSN and Lycos), both of which date back to 1996, and have options for advanced and customized use.
Excite.com (1995; later merged with AskJeeves) and Infoseek.com (1994; now part of go.com) are two more.
Among many specialized tools on the Web, try Webopedia for tech searches and WorldCat to find books in libraries.
The way to stop them, is as someone said, in their pocketbooks. You don’t need to go there and put up with hate speech. Just keep on using your influence where you have it, with youth, children, students of all ages, in offices and wherever publications, documents and educational material is prepared. Women have a lot of influence in those fields. Make it clear: WP is not accepted as source or citation. Hopefully, that will keep it to a boyz club, and in time, it’ll starve itself to death.
test
Don’t expect men to act like women, they are much more competitive and aggresive by nature. Their competition is what creates material culture. You know, if women ran the “world” we would have no wars but we would still be living in caves. I put world in quotes because women do run the world of familial relationships.
So create your own version of things. When ever I see a women complaining I see a situation that if reversed a man would just go and invent or create what he wanted, not wasting time on complaining.
Patriarcy is biologicaly based, there aree twice as many men with IQs above 120 and 30 times as many with IQs over 170. There are also more stupid men but since men dominate the highest levels of IQ and have 15 times more testosterone they occupy the highest levels of achievement, now, in the past and for ever, amen!
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