Wow, thank you, Gillian! I just took a quick spin through both of them and
they really do seem improved, especially child-free. I remember looking at
it about six months ago and wincing -- as you say, it had some huge gaps.
And I just looked at the history of childless and you're right, the older
versions really do seem to come from a male POV --- particularly the list of
famous men (and their wives) who didn't have kids.

Thank you for making them so much better :-)
Sue



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On 16 October 2011 04:47, Gillian White <[email protected]> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I read these articles [[Childless]] and [[Childfree]] at the beginning of
> the weekend to follow up on the removal of the aforementioned pointless
> lists of childless men that used to be in them. And yes, while it is a good
> thing to have deleted the pointless lists, the articles were still awful. So
> appalling that I have spent my weekend working on them and just wanted to
> have a rant here about it (apologies in advance). Begin rant ... It says
> something about our editorship that one of the most important issues for
> women throughout history and across the globe - something that has caused
> unspeakable suffering, is related to serious illnesses, has brought down
> kingdoms, caused wars and crime, destroyed relationships, damaged national
> potential etc etc - was reduced to two muddled, myopic, arrogant, ahistoric
> articles largely concentrating on an option available only to a few rich,
> privileged women in a few wealthy areas of the world for the last thirty
> years. That is, there were two articles, with two names, both mostly about
> voluntary childlessness. Thus, did the encyclopedia ignore almost every
> woman on the planet over about three thousand years and all their shared and
> individual experiences with controlling conception when there were/are very
> few options. Reading the pair of articles was equivalent to reading an
> article on "Food" dominated by content about pistachio ice cream. So, yes,
> we do need more women editors! I am one of the women fortunate enough to
> have had "options" but I do know, unlike apparently the original articles,
> that "childfree" is not an option for most of the world and until very
> recently has not been a reliable option for anyone. I also know that
> childlessness matters to many people for lots of different reasons. I have
> separated the content of the two articles and included some of the very
> serious issues to which childlessness is related as well as tried to give
> the childfree one a more global perspective.  End rant. Thanks for reading.
> Yes, I know the articles are not finished. I am going back to my bricklaying
> now (no, really!) and trying to earn a living (but not from bricklaying). I
> will return though [?] PS If you want a real heroine, read about
> [[Catherine Hamlin]] who has quietly and efficiently been restoring women's
> health and giving them back their lives for over fifty years.
>
> Gillian
>
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>
>

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