In-line :- On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:50, Bishakha Datta <bishakhada...@gmail.com> wrote:
<snipped> > Hey Shirish, Dear Bishaka, > Been talking to lots of women about this - one barrier I'm finding from > informal chats with many women in India who are otherwise comfy with the net > is technical. At the first Mumbai meetup in Sept 2010, women who blog etc > regularly said they found the editing interface much harder to use, so > tried, then abandoned it. While I do accept the part of the interface being technical and can be made more pleasant/easy (something like wordpress.com perhaps and which has been discussed to death in off-line sessions) what would also be perhaps cool for them is to able to use lot of real-world analogies to the audience so that they are able to understand stuff. Just to take an example, about a year/year and a half ago had gone to McLeodganj, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh and had done a GNU/Linux workshop for around 10-15 days by self. The main audience were hitchikers/backpackers/people seeking spiritual answers. Because I have been all that and know their language intimately was able to share both experiences as well as some knowledge. It was a week affair but all of us benefitted from the same. I didn't document this on the blog because people usually equate GNU/Linux to seriousness or serious people and not with fun etc. Similar is the case of wikipedia. Now, obviously, somebody would have to do something similar so it feels safe,secure and loving environment to learn and ask questions. > At the Kolkata wiki 10 meetup in Jan 2011, a woman who had attended an > earlier meetup requested a wiki workshop for a group of women - she wanted a > separate workshop for women only so that women could really understand how > to edit and work through the editing interface and ask basic questions > without appearing stupid or ignorant. She felt constrained to ask these > questions in the more technologically-sophisticated environment of the > regular meetups. Know what you mean, see above. The same also happens during geek workshops, of course once you have been in it for a long time you develop a thick skin and are able to ask things to your heart's content. But for a newbie it can be scary for sure. > Also, many women who are interested in editing are not necessarily willing > to learn how to edit + related policies on their own. True. It would have to somehow tailored to them. > So yes, helpers and guides would be great - as well as workshops both aimed > specifically at women, and general workshops where we encourage more women > to participate. (We don't want to lump women into a separate category > necessarily, but if we really want to encourage more women to edit, we do > need to address barriers *they* identify as well - so a mixed strategy would > be great.) agree. > Also, while we should, of course, continue to do workshops at IITs, VJTI and > other technical institutes, there's already a gender gap at these institutes > - where there are many more men than women. If we only look for women where > there are largely men, we are unlikely to find them. So it would be good to > look for IT or related departments at women's colleges such as SNDT etc too. agree as well. > There are many other barriers, some general, some specific to women, as is > being discussed on gendergap...just wanted to highlight this. > > Cheers > Bishakha One should not also forget when targetting one party there could be other side-benefits which end up benefitting the whole community which perhaps can't be seen now. For instance, better documentation which is still a core issue in many a project/s. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
