Pranesh Prakash wrote, [on 10/3/2009 5:49 PM]: > I'm just wondering about the distribution of Silk membership wrt gender. > To a newcomer, it seems like the majority is male. I'm also curious > about the reasons for this. Is it techno-historical, and dependent on > the way Silk started?
This question comes up every now and again. This time, I decided to see if my gut feel was validated by data, so spent some time poking through the member list. Out of 237 current members, 48 are known by me to be female. So, just over 1 in 5 silklisters is female. Some notes: 1. The main membership pipeline for silk is people who I run across and consider both interesting, as well as the kind of person who would add to the conversation here. 2. A secondary pipeline is existing members who introduce new ones. 3. A tertiary pipeline, back in the days when the membership was technically open (being private only by virtue of obscurity) was people who just stumbled across the page and signed up. 4. There are several email addresses that I actually can't identify at this time, and don't feel like putting in the archaeological labour in my inbox to identify as positively male or female, so the data is suspect to that extent. Some related discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/1216 (from 1999) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/4021 (from 2001) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/13677 (from 2005) Not sure what conclusions one can draw, but here are a few wild hypotheses: a. I get to meet more men than women who I think might fit in (multiple gates in the above sentence, please read with care) b. Even so, the vocal minority on this list skews male, as the women tend to keep their own counsel most of the time (thinking more seriously on this, this does not seem to be true, as the number of active female participants on silk is disproportionate to their total number.) c. The *kinds* of things that get talked about on silk are not to the liking of the female participants (whether this is cause, effect, or simply the style is also arguable) Thoughts, ideally from the women on the list? Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
