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Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-11-29/Essay

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  • Having created a few articles about pre-1900 British women, it has become clear to me that because their contemporary "authoritative" sources tend to be based on the concept of a male-dominated society, and because high-achieving women in the pre-1900 society often had to practice under the name of their male work superior or their male relative - that Wikipedia's rules of evidence should be adjusted for biographies of such women. I believe that it should be OK for an editor to clearly demonstrate and explain a deduction (with sources for the premises) that a woman is likely to have achieved, or possibly achieved this or that in the name of a male - without the editor being accused of original research or similar misdemeanour. So long as such an editorial process is made clear, that sort of editing should not be deleted. In that case, such a deduction could be balanced by a comment that the achievement could also have been collaborative, or solely the man's work, where appropriate. If we don't give space for this, in a proper and controlled manner of course, then we are probably never going to get a fair balance of articles about British pre-1900 women. (NB I only really have extensive experience of researching British women, and I leave it to others to decide if my comments should also apply to women of other countries). Storye book (talk) 19:07, 29 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
    On what would such a deduction be based? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 04:57, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Premises and a conclusion, as I said. The premises could be anything, if WP could dare to move on from authoritative third-party peer-reviewed quotable statement. That means using what are currently called primary sources (but which are not all necessarily really primary - such as a published-online famous art establishment catalogue, for example). It could be a deduction based on who is dead and who isn't, who runs the company, and who is formally credited for the work, and who, when all other possibilities are eliminated, remains responsible for the company production. If we are to look beyond the patriarchal records of the era in question, then we must be prepared to look beyond WP's rules about sources, and be prepared to stop mudslinging accusations of OR and the like at editors writing female biographies. Ideally, of course it would be good to end up with an all-third-party-authoritative sources article, but the initial start-class article should be permitted to contain a fair proportion of primary sources if they are shown as reasonable indications of female achievement or other notability. I am currently working on an example of this type of thing, and under WP rules I cannot create an article about it at all. I am currently decrypting a number of (currently unpublished) ca.1904 writings in a unique, self-invented code created by a young woman who was studying Latin and Greek and teaching piano, while suffering an unnamed debilitating illness. The evidence for this is the writing itself, plus various sources for her background. Almost all of the evidence is primary in WP terms. I shall be publishing the writings on Commons in due course, but the sources are still primary. On that basis, any article about her would be deleted, yet she invented (or at the very least, co-invented) something. It is a pity that WP's inflexibility on this point means that her achievement will go unrecognised. Storye book (talk) 14:54, 2 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Not dismissing the proposal, I'm open to the idea of Wikipedia originally publishing research, however, if you publish your work, Storye book, through a reliable channel, for example, a journal article, that then can be used as a reliable source. So it's not inevitable that this women will always go unrecognized.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 00:15, 11 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Thank you 3family6 for the encouragement. However those academic journals which I have seen in the past have aligned themselves not only with specific areas of discipline, but to be published there you have to be responding to a current, specific, narrow discussion theme. The subject that I've described above doesn't fit in anywhere. Most of my stuff doesn't - that's why my research has always been independent. If you are looking to please a publisher, particular audience or employer, you can never research the kind of left-of-field subjects that I go for. If you know of any academic journal which covers the area that I'm working in, please let me know? Storye book (talk) 10:03, 11 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • All the ideas about aiming for non-biased writing are good. Yet I'm very tired of the Wikipedia has a male-bias narrative that's become standard, which typically is to just state the same two statistics (the percentage of female editors and the percentage of female biography articles) and then just kind of expect the reader to nod as they take as granted that there's some massive conspiracy keeping women from being 50% of our editors and 50% of our biography articles. When the topic of gender bias comes up and people mention the "gender gap" and how "only 18%" of our articles are about women, it begs the question be asked, "What percentage should it be?" A kneejerk reaction might suggest 50%... but that can't be right since society HAS been severely biased against women, especially pre-1900 as this article states. Historically (and still currently in many places) women simply were expected to be more domestic which kept them from being in positions where they could do something encyclopedic. Given that that is true, it makes no sense to expect 50% of our articles to be about women. So what percentage should it be? I don't know but it's very possible that the current 20% is the current historically motivated value given that it is only in the last century women have been gaining the independence and freedom they deserve. This view, which is perfectly plausible and makes mathematical sense, has never been given proper consideration by the "Wikipedia is biased" folks. As for female editors, do we expect 50% there too? Again no. Many places in the world do not yet have equality for women and this will mean they are channeled into traditional roles. Our own surveys have found that women prioritize their time differently than men and this is a factor in the gender disparity. Some woman like the traditional housewife role that takes care of children and the house and leaves little time for editing. Others who stop editing said they viewed their career as a better way to spend their time than on Wikipedia compared men. Again, this is what our own surveys found. So 50% editorship is NOT expected either but something below 50%. What should it be? Again I don't know. These numbers are a result of social forces all over the world and we can't control society. We should focus on this things we CAN control. For example, Wikipedia and its sister projects should be inclusive and aggressively stamp out any editor being hostile to others based on gender. It should aim to educate readers (like this article is doing) about how to avoid bias they might not be aware they are propagating. The bottom line is that the fact that the percentages are both rising is good. But that might be less about us stamping out bias and more about us just tracking the trends of society. Jason Quinn (talk) 03:00, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @Jason Quinn: I'm very tired of the Wikipedia has a male-bias narrative So am I, and as soon as it's no longer true, we can all stop talking about it! Until then, it seems worth discussing. With all due respect to my fellow male Wikipedians and the fatigue that sets in for them whenever this topic comes up, I have to imagine that it's female Wikipedians who are really tired of Wikipedia's gender bias, so I would submit that as long as they're still willing to talk about it, we have an obligation to at least show up and listen. We don't actually have to say anything, if we're feeling tuckered out. It's totally acceptable for us to pipe down, and simply hear them. (In fact, perhaps that would even be the preferable approach.)
    As for female editors, do we expect 50% there too? Oh, heck no! That's far too low. I'm with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was fond of saying, when asked how many female Supreme Court justices would be "enough": "When there are nine, of course!" (As she correctly noted, we've tried a Court composed of nine men plenty of times...) And if say 70%, or 80%, or 100% of active Wikipedia editors in a given month were women, then perhaps we'd actually make some real progress on correcting the content gender imbalance that we're all so tired of. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 05:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
    @FeRDNYC: and as soon as it's no longer true I just presented a counter argument that suggests that the bias may not exist, or at least exist to an extent far less than is typically suggested. Instead of thinking about it and considering it, you instead ignored it to maintain a preferred narrative. This is POV pushing. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
    By that standard, how is it that whatever you're doing here doesn't constitute "POV pushing"? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:03, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think Jason that you are the one POV pushing here, and in fact, your response is a perfect example of the The "No-Problem" Problem. Having been involved in rescuing articles about female-related topics I easily recognize the types of bias that this essay explains. Jane (talk) 14:36, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Jane023: Straight-hard fact: the Wikipedia-has-a-male-bias crowd has no defined objective for success. Worse, the editors claiming bias dodge and won't even properly address the issue. It's been this way for years. This is super important because the default (and zero thought) interpretation of success is 50% female editors and 50% female biographies. If we somehow magically managed to achieve those statistics tomorrow, the encyclopedia would have a huge female bias!! That is paradoxical-sounding at first, until you realize those numbers would mean there hasn't been any historical female bias. (Since it is contradictory to their own cause, this is the unsavory reason why editors don't want to define an objective.) Even if it's granted that bias exists in the encyclopedia, not one among you has ever even attempted to explain when and how they can detect if that bias has been effectively eliminated using those two statistics. In the absence of clearly-defined objectives, you have editors — as evidenced here — claiming I think seriously (despite it being semi-disguised as sarcasm as an easy out) that success might mean having a female majority editorship, perhaps even 100%. As for your edits, great. I am NOT saying non-neutral language doesn't exist on Wikipedia. If you see a way to improve an article, great. But discussing individual articles is pennies on the dollar. My focus is on the macroscopic level related to the two metrics that always seen to be used to "prove" bias. If somebody is claiming there is something wrong with our percentage of female editors and percentage of female biographies, they need to explain what they "should be" with a convincing argument. Otherwise it's not meaningful. Jason Quinn (talk) 04:12, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
Not a straight hard fact, but just your opinion. Like I said, perfect example of the "No-Problem" Problem. Jane (talk) 08:10, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
Good. If it's "just an opinion", then state it. What is the consensus objective with respect to those two statistics to measure successful elimination of bias? Waiting for answer. Jason Quinn (talk) 13:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
I was referring to your statements as opinion, and my opinion is that I agree with the article. In fact I took the picture of the blurb next to the painting by Rachel Ruysch. I suspect that the actual percentage of female editors on Wikipedia is even lower than the percentage of people willing to admit their female gender. However, there simply is no way to gather such statistics other than by interview or survey, and such means are few and far between anyway. My point about your comments being opinion is that you are just as unable to prove that your opinion is true. The idea that male bias is baked into most of academia is visible in the number of female professors, the number of female scholarship appointments, the number of awards to females in any academic discipline etc, and is not something that Wikipedia is able to change. By actively promoting women and working on the gap, Wikipedia can set an example that will hopefully find it's way back into academia. That said, it is also not clear what exactly drives women away from Wikipedia, or in any case fails to draw them in, but it is possibly the lack of sources that are interesting for women and which would enable them to produce articles with the same ease as men. Certainly I often find myself needing to create about five articles first in order to create the basis for one article about a missing women. This is because some major concept having to do with the woman's life is still missing. I think it would be great if more women contributed to Wikipedia, but sometimes I just wish more women would take an active part in reduce the gendergap in academia so that we would have more sources for articles about female-related aspects of everyday life, such as maternal death causes and prevention. We rarely consider Wikipedia being a matter of life and death, but we see more and more that people rely on Wikipedia as a source for information in their lives. Jane (talk) 18:04, 2 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
Unlike the notorious RBG, the goal is to have roughly 50% of the volunteer editors be female, and to have topics of usually greater interest to women to be covered in as much depth as topics of usually greater interest to men. (Which is not quite the same thing as male and female biographies, though those are a fair indicator.) --GRuban (talk) 13:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • As a side note, I can't believe I actually read this sentence in the year 2020: Some woman like the traditional housewife role that takes care of children and the house and leaves little time for editing. We really do still have a long, long way to go. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 05:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • @Davidwr: Oh, absolutely! Though I hope very few people of any gender adopt a role in the household that "leaves little time for editing" if they in fact want to edit, because what the hell are the other members of their household doing that they have comparatively greater amounts of free time available!? Clearly it's not pitching in and sharing the burden of responsibility at home. A relationship that leaves only one partner so overburdened that they have no time for themselves strikes me as a very unhealthy one! -- FeRDNYC (talk) 06:14, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Why would a "traditional housewife" role necessarily leave less time for editing than a "traditional money earner" role? --GRuban (talk) 21:53, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
    Man works from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done. EEng 23:46, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • @FeRDNYC: We really do still have a long, long way to go. If you cannot accept common sense factual assertions without warping them into some statement to try to re-enforce a narrowly focused worldview, it is you who have a long way to go.... back to reality. As I stated, it was other things like jobs and family that our own survey found is the main reason women do not edit and stop editing Wikipedia. This is not my point of view, it was the point of view of women! You don't have to try to find chauvinism and injustice in everything. Look for truth instead. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Thank you for rerunning this, there's a lot of really good information here, and the more times we drill it into people the more hope we have of eventually seeing lasting improvements.
There are occasional glimmers of hope just in what's changed (usually in small ways) since the essay's 2015 authorship. For one, singular they has become much more widely and readily accepted/adopted. It appears all over popular media and in culture recently, typically with minimal reaction. There's less need to give it the speak-slowly-and-use-small-words treatment, the way this essay seems to. Clearly the text here was written anticipating fairly confused and/or skeptical reactions, at least from some editors. FeRDNYC (talk) 05:19, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I am responding to points raised above, as to whether bias against recognition of women's achievements may exist, or matter to any extent. I can only talk about the 19th century in the UK, because that is where I have done most research. Our bias about female achievement there is not based on verifiable evidence that women achieved less in those days, because there isn't such evidence. Women were achieving, but allowed men to take credit (or maybe men took credit anyway) because the market did not welcome work authored by women. Census enumerators usually did not write down wives' professions due to not asking, due to social expectations of men being the breadwinners and possibly women did not bother to tell them for similar reasons, yet often a woman's work was mentioned in documents elsewhere. For years I watched my late mother-in-law quietly doing the parish accounts in her home, although her less bright husband had been made parish council treasurer, and took all the credit. She went on to run a successful business which she started from scratch, proving her ability. That was of course a 20th century event, but the pattern would have been the same in the 19th. In the 19th century, women often could not sell their work directly, so they had to sell it through a male intermediary. Since all households needed income, there are no grounds for any assumption that women did not use their abilities to earn in that way. Our bias is of ignorance of what was really happening. The 19th-century novels referencing women's place in the home were written for a market which expected that as an ideal promoted by Anglican evangelicals (a different meaning from today's US evangelicals) but real women still had to earn. So please do not assume that 19th century British women did not achieve. They did, and some of it can be found out, if we only look for it. Storye book (talk) 10:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Finally a definitive set of instructions we can follow, or perhaps it already exists and I've not read it. scope_creepTalk 14:40, 30 November 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • There looks to be a gross error here. The ref at note 2 takes you to: 62 English 1767980 329746 18.65 - rank, language, all bios, female, %. This is around the figure I'm used to, and the 329746 is WAAAY higher than the 291,649 in the essay. I don't believe it was much different in March. The % looks ok though.[Actually this movement since March seems ok] As a long discussion at WiR showed, you can't understand gender ratios in WP BLPs without allowing for the massive distorting effect of the vast number of sports bios we have, the great majority male. Exclude all sports people, and the female BLP % is around 30%, which is not far away from the %s in many easily countable always-notable types of people, such as national elected politicians, heads of quoted businesses, fellows of national science academies etc etc. Johnbod (talk) 03:45, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
Johnbod, the female BLP percentage excluding sportspeople is a very interesting statistic. What is the source? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:04, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
It came from https://www.denelezh.org/gender-gap/ which currently seems to be dead. This is a page about the figures: A short history of Denelezh by Envel Le Hir. Possibly it has been merged into other figures now. User:Andrew Gray will probably know. The long discussion at WiR was Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Archive_67#Sports,_sports,_sports_(Jun-Jul_2019). Johnbod (talk) 16:48, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Johnbod and Clayoquot: I haven't had a chance to reassess these numbers since then - I really need to try and find the time to run some more analysis - but would agree that athletes, defined broadly, make up a disproportionately high share of our BLPs, and men make up a disproportionately high share of athletes. My numbers probably had an overly generous definition of "athlete" but it came to about 29% female for "all non-athlete BLPs".
Sadly, I'm not sure what happened to the denelezh data, which was really useful for getting a handle on this sort of question. I know there have been plans to replace it with a newer tool but not sure how far that's got. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:15, 4 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Heaps of thanks to SarahSV and co-editors of this excellent piece. Tony (talk) 08:14, 5 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I can't link to a photo because I can't see it in person (museum still closed due to lockdown) but there's a picture of the Rachel Ruysch flower painting being rehung in the Rijksmuseum honor gallery in recognition of International Women's Day. Two other notable paintings by women were hung there: Portrait of Moses by Gesina ter Borch and the Jolly Drinker by Judith Leyster. It's about time! Maybe this essay helped? Who knows. Jane (talk) 13:30, 8 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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