 Those of you who are feeling sleepy, you know who you are, I Invite you to get up and come closer to the front. That'll make me happy and perhaps make you less sleepy This is Shulamit, one of the newest members of the Wikimedia cuteness association She's from Johannesburg and she will be supervising this talk along with her colleagues Alkes the Wikidata moose and Kankunczyk the turtle. I want to offer you some thoughts on a different but related Tack From what we've heard so far what we've heard so hard about gender and women on Wikipedia I want to look outside to the feminist movement Overall in the real world and see what we can learn from the feminist movement in particularly in particular from the feminist actions not feminist theory That would Sustain and inform our work in our movement not just on gender issues What lessons can we learn from the feminists for knowledge equity and for our work in general? Yes, my name is Asaf. I work for the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm a longtime Wikipedia volunteer at the foundation My current focus is working with emerging communities on capacity building I am also extremely blinded by this very brutal projection Okay, let's set some expectations. I am not an expert on feminism. This is not going to be comprehensive I'm sharing insights and inspirations I have found in the feminist movement that I think would be relevant for us You will notice that my slides are text heavy that is against common wisdom and that is in favor of Accessibility intelligibility for people whose native language is not English and for later upload to commons So bear with me those who like tiny slides with two words Okay So I'll start by recognizing my inspiration for this talk Professor Deborah road a distinguished scholar of law At Stanford University. She is the most cited legal scholar on legal ethics She's a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and she was awarded among many other awards the White House champion of change award Much of this talk is based on a brilliant article of hers called the no problem problem and Also the work of Anke Foss Hubbard Who is a red link on Wikipedia? She's an archivist and librarian She has worked extensively with the papers of the feminist Margaret Sanger and I offer you a quote from her The decisions of today will determine what's there tomorrow Something we I think sympathize with and understand as wikipedia So very briefly in case anyone wandered into this room Without knowing what feminism is Wikipedia says feminism is a range of political movements ideologies and social movements that share a common goal to define establish and achieve political economic personal and social Equality of sexes The word women is not in this definition. I want you to notice And I also want to share this quote by Gloria Steinem famous American feminist When she was asked to assess the impact of the women's movement on the world She thought for a moment and then said well, that's like being asked to describe the universe in three examples So the women's movement has had a tremendous impact on the world on society Not just in the West and so I think we have a lot to learn That movement has pursued many struggles and many aspects of lacking equality I will name just a few to exercise your Imagination in case you're mostly thinking about voting rights for example. Well, yes voting rights famously But also property and inheritance rights equal pay equal terms. That is equal treatment Equal employment opportunities equal access to education something that obviously resonates very much for us reproductive rights freedom from harassment and Recognition and representation in art and history these terms I have bolded. I hope have obvious relevance to our work and Even men's liberation. I again point this out in case some people think this is all good But largely about women. It isn't feminism is also men's liberation Okay, so I want to offer you three lessons that I see out of many things that we could learn from the feminist movement The first lesson is the problem is real and some people need convincing and Professor road suggests that a major issue is that most people believe the world is basically just Yes, there are deviances from justice, but basically it is just basically the world is set up in a way that works for most people Basically, the way things are is the way things should be it's a natural apparently tendency of humans to accept status quo to accept the world as they encounter it and To sustain this belief to to maintain this comfortable belief this comforting belief people are willing to alter their assessments of Of merit of what is good and bad and even to retroactively justify existing social arrangements so For example, we always hear that women are still not paid equally even in the West even in the US The figure of 70 cents for the dollar is often mentioned And then people instead of saying that is horrible and unjust and how are we even living in this society still? It's 2018 people try to find some things to to explain Excuse justify, you know, well women have children. They have pregnancies. Maybe they're promoted less I mean all kinds of things instead of sticking to the Upsetting conclusion that this is not just and this is not okay It's it's easier to just come up with some explanation that makes it. Oh, yeah. Well that explains it and So this is what professor road calls the no problem problem we have the problem that most people don't understand there is a problem and For many and maybe most I'm not sure I don't have the research to back that up for many Wikipedians the existence of systemic bias and the effective even if unintended exclusion of minorities and marginalized people and knowledge is either not a problem or Not their problem Not a problem or not their problem So people who say there is no problem no knowledge is marginalized. There's no people barred from editing etc etc I would divide them into two groups. The first and large group are the naive Right people who literally don't know don't see that there's a problem. They're not willfully Pretending there is no problem. They truly don't see there is a problem Probably because of a Narrowness of experience. They've never met anyone not like them. They've never traveled They've never seen how the rest of the world lives all kinds of reasons like that could get someone to have the natural naive assumption Everybody's like me. Everybody should have the same opportunities as me etc. So I can do it. Why can't anyone else? There is no problem But there is a small group who are willfully asserting there is no problem And those would be people who are actually invested and interested in the status quo Remaining and not changing at all whether because they have opinions bigoted opinions racist opinions sexist opinions And whether because I don't know they're Terrible people and like to see people Frustrated or suffer but that is definitely the minority. There is a very large group of people who are naive who need to be Taught who need to be shown that there is a problem and the naive people who think there is no problem could be shown These are the people we can convince Now then there's the people who say yes, there is a problem, but we have no responsibility to for for causing it That's just how it is. We didn't make the world. We didn't make the situation We didn't decide to discriminate against minorities or women or Or Have any responsibility to fix it even if we didn't cause it. Do we have any responsibility to fix it? Just as a quick example the people Opposing slavery in the United States in the 19th century the abolitionists they did not invent slavery, right? It was invented centuries before they did not bring the slaves from Africa Does that mean they do not did not have a responsibility to end it think about that So whether or not you're responsible for a problem is orthogonal is is not necessarily related to whether you have some Responsibility for fixing it and so you hear people saying yes, we are for inclusivity equity in principle But then you hear them dismiss one after another all the Practical proposals that could do something about it. Yes we have a gender participation problem on Wikipedia, but This idea won't work and this project is too expensive and we couldn't possibly do this So that's just how it is Not for us to solve and I would like to specifically call out for those of you who are English wikipedia's you may have encountered this acronym There's this shortcut for the the policy section that says wikipedia Does not exist to right great wrongs Right to correct great wrongs and that is indeed a guideline on wikipedia Meaning, you know if I don't know someone was wrongly convicted of murder and it's really unjust and and you know This person didn't do it don't come to wikipedia to fight for this person's innocence You know go to the courts appeal whatever wikipedia is not the place to correct any and all injustice And that is correct. That is that is a reasonable policy for wikipedia But I find I found in several discussions that people cite this policy for systemic issues When people bring up for example Minority participation or indigenous knowledge they say well, yeah It's it's kind of it kind of sucks that this knowledge isn't on wikipedia But wikipedia doesn't correct the world doesn't fix great wrongs, and I think that is a misapplication of that policy Hmm because this bias is is taking away from our neutrality wikipedia should be neutral. That means it should be unbiased Another Mechanism at work is the devaluation of difference so People minimize the actual difference in need or in ability or in approach or in meaning as A way of obstructing the achievement of genuine equity So one of the common ways we see this on the wiki is people repeating anyone can edit Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit What keeps women from editing, you know, maybe they just don't want to edit What keeps minorities from showing up and editing? Why don't we have more African editors? Where are they? This focus on formal rights right formally anyone from Africa has the same ability to edit as I do is Irrelevant that that is not the main cause that keeps a lot of Africans from editing But some people focus on that and say that's enough they have the potential ability to edit they have They can start an account. They can edit they can edit without an account. That's it that's all we need to do to enable African participation in Wikipedia or women or indigenous knowledge or any of the marginalized groups and I want to suggest to you And this is this middle bullet is a quote from professor road equality informal rights Masks the inequality in the actual daily experience of people for example their lack of access for example The language situation they're working in For example the existence of bigoted and and biased people on Wikipedia in positions of privilege Another inspiring idea is that demanding fairness Shouldn't automatically mean you have to accept all of status quo And that is often the demand we make we in Wikipedia make for people who come from the outside We say well first you play by our rules all of our rules and then maybe one day You'll get to change some of those rules But if we accept even theoretically that some of our existing rules some of the status quo is Not exactly perfectly where it should be Then it should be legitimate to question it to challenge it Politely not aggressively etc. Etc. You you you that doesn't mean yes ignore all rules ignore notability, etc Obviously, I'm not advocating for that. I hope it's obvious But I want you to notice that people having and this was said in some other sessions people from marginalized communities or with marginalized knowledge often have to Negotiate with their oppressor even if it's the unintended oppressor The the the body of volunteers representing the culture that has Marginalized their group or their knowledge they have to negotiate on their terms on the oppressor terms in order to even get a foot in The door to be able to begin To to have the conversation and of course even the wikipedia insistence on having our discussions on wiki Which has very good reasons right for archivability accountability diffs, etc. Etc. We all know why it's good to have discussions on wiki and not on Facebook, etc Itself of course excludes people who for whatever reason aren't able or willing to make the effort to do that And again that may be a price that we need to pay for the benefits that on wiki conversation gives us But but it does come with a cost another Tactic that the feminists encounter and that I think we encounter as well is denying the responsibility So yes, we have a problem, but it's elsewhere. It's not on our wiki. You know some wikis Discriminate but our wiki is kind of okay some wiki projects are really bigoted or Exclusive, but we welcome anyone Our events are okay. My edits are okay And that may be true your edits may be okay. You still have some responsibility About other people's edits. It's a community and we as we know we police our community ourselves Right. There is no chief editor to wikipedia. We are responsible for each other's actions We are responsible for each other's behaviors And we do take action against other people's edits or against other people's behaviors in certain cases and in other cases We choose not to take action Wikipedians in particular I have seen sometimes assigned responsibility elsewhere. So the marginalization is Because that's how the world is. It's because of governments. It's because of parents. It's because of religion And again, yes, these may all be involved But often that is the end of the sentence, you know, well, it's it's it's their religion or well That's that's the country they live in Period and so we're not gonna do anything about it But we might do something about it even if yes part of that Marginalization part of this situation part of this injustice has to do with a government or a religion or whatever It there may still be something for us to do Even more depressingly some marginalized people internalize the marginalization and they themselves deny there is a problem they internalize the the marginalized status and You hear this I hear this at least I travel a lot in the wikimedia world You hear people saying well, I'm I don't know if this belongs on wikipedia I don't know if I if I can contribute anything. I don't know if I'm educated enough I don't know if my English is good enough And Some existing editors some wikipedians Reinforce that they tell people yes, your English is not good enough even if it is Really not much worse than the average misspelling American Not all Americans have great English So this leads to a situation where it is difficult to to Demand to fight for or even to imagine having ever Something you have never had before like what would it look like if you could bring your knowledge onto wikipedia What would it look like if you didn't have to fear for your safety if you your username sounds like a woman's name What would it look like because for example to take the example of women and harassment online that was mentioned having porn sent to you Etc. That is a reality for women that many men literally don't realize could possibly be Lots of men insist. Yeah, it probably happens Sometimes they don't realize that in a room this size not a terribly big crowd We know statistically for a fact some people in this room have had this happen to them That's how common it is So People who live in that world women who live in the online world as it is today for example may have a hard time imagining Well, how could it stop? Why would it stop? Which leads to an enforcing of status quo Then there's blaming the victim of course if I can reject edits By somehow finding fault with the victim even sorry if I can reject marginalized knowledge By pointing that some of it was misspelled then that's very easy I point to the misspelling and I reject the whole thing even though if the topic was not Marginalized knowledge. I might have just corrected the misspelling and accepted it This sends a very strong message though As though the the spelling mistakes could not be corrected. The whole thing has to be rejected And and can further deepen the the victimhood This is a sentence I've actually seen on Wikipedia Reliable sources on African topics are a big problem, but Wikipedia can't be expected to solve it Yes, there is a problem not for us to solve can't be expected to solve it and alternatives solutions proposals projects some of us may propose are Rejected for being impractical too expensive, etc. I want to suggest to you the idea that an apparent Intractability right like the appearance of being able to make no progress on something is often simply resistance To having to review and possibly revise Your priorities if you are really invested in avoiding that review in avoiding that moment when you may need to realize you need to revise Your policies or to admit that what you've been doing up to now Was not okay in some way and that's a very powerful Psychological motivator to avoid that Then then you would be invested in creating the appearance that this is just unsolvable. There's just no no way to solve this And so you hear sentences like yeah, it's not fair, but that's just how it is The status quo is taken as a given. It's immutable But anything you ask that's up for negotiation And of course economic concerns. These are concerns that feminists have heard about the vote These are concerns. They've heard about property rights about access to education Etc. Etc. But when we say we can't afford something we are also saying we can't afford What it costs us we can't afford losing these contributions. We can't afford losing this knowledge. We can't afford Maintaining a monoculture Evidently we can't afford that because we can't afford your solution Lesson number two and this will be much briefer documentation matters Let's play a quick game Please name five classical music composers Bach Mozart What? Beethoven next Brahms Sorry, what? Arvo pert excellent Arvo pert. Yes five classical music composers now name one classical music composer who was a woman Thank you anyone else Clara Schumann very good. Very good. Why do we know about Clara Schumann? Because she was married to Robert Schumann Unfortunately So anyone else? Female classical music composers Yeah Yeah So here's some help Fanny Mendelssohn also from the Mendelssohn musical family Hildegard of Bingen And she's remembered I think mostly because of the religious significance But there were others Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi and quite a few women composed classical music from the Baroque onwards Why was this so hard? Why was this so hard? We have a whole room here. Why was this so hard? because Most of you Certainly, I was raised on a certain narrative of classical music where not a single woman was mentioned Is this because there were no female composers? No Why was that? Because the people who wrote that narrative the people who wrote the textbooks on the history of classical music Actively chose to ignore that and of course after you do that for several generations Later music historians literally don't know about the women Baroque musicians And they have to be rediscovered so I Hope that helped make the point. We all grew up on similar narratives. We could play this game on any any number of other Professions and there are other kinds of invisibilities when we say the discovery of America in the 15th century That is Rendering a lot of the world invisible the part of the world that knew and lived in America before the 15th century In the 18th century when Australia was first settled It was settled before then Even the word Americans meaning citizens of the United States of America renders some people invisible even the Appalachian the states that Americans like to use the states. There are other states the United Kingdom. There are other kingdoms But these are these are expressions of power and centrality that still remain in the English language and many more So the availability of sources as we know as wikipedia's influences and sometimes determines What gets told what gets counted and what gets included this is literally reflected in wikipedia norms Here I'd like to suggest you to introduce to you Mary Ritter Beard another important feminist who said without knowledge of women in history as actual history dead women are sheer ghosts to living women and to men and As Nintendo warned us Everything not saved will be lost It is Mary Beard who not not the Oxford Mary Beard Mary Ritter Beard the American Who warned us no documents no history? She worked hard to build the first the world center for women's archives Meant to collect a whole range of different women's archives She finally managed to found it in 1937, but had to shut it down in 1940 for lack of funding still She can continue to Encourage citizen archiving and collection of archives from remote places to centralize them and make them accessible Eventually she got recognition by establishment librarians who invited her to help them and advise them on the strength of their collections and Finally found a partner in Margaret Greerson of Smith College and founded the Historical collection of books by and about women later renamed the Sophia Smith collection to this day hosted by Smith College Ironically by the way Beard considered her own letters and manuscripts of little interest and did not preserve them Literally not a single letter of hers to her husband who was a famous historian himself Literally not one remains She warned that these archives would only succeed if faculty if professors Incorporated them in their teaching not just collecting the material But in the early days of that collection in the mid 20th century most faculty avoided using the collection and steered students away from it However today the Sophia Smith collection holds more than 700 different collections and over 3,000 linear meters of Collection that's that's one way to measure collections. I know it's weird for those of you not into libraries But more than three kilometers of shelves just imagine that okay three kilometers of shelves of material of And today it is considered a major source of reliable information the lesson I offer us is that yes lack of sources and to narrow definitions of reliable sources and Ability are hindering us today and should be reviewed and probably revised But at the same time one long-term strategy is to document to create more documentation as Beard and other women have done about women's history Indigenous knowledge needs to be documented better Marginalized groups ethnic groups minorities need to create more documentation, which will begin marginalized itself But in time will be recognized and end with some Improving standards of curation will eventually become the source that the collection that was saved and not lost And finally and with this I'll end the importance of of allies Versus opponents in the silent majority Dominating cultures and dominating norms usually have the force of numbers But those numbers don't come from active oppressors or members of the privileged elite But from the silent cooperation of the majority Most men have not certainly today do not conspire to oppress women most men merely put up with it Allies to marginalized groups would be the key to resist Such domination and to increase equity without allies. We wouldn't have the numbers We've heard about the importance of encouragement from previous speakers and the importance of invitation and Accommodation of difference Our wikis have as I said bigots sexist racist because they're a large group of humans and all large groups of humans have them But those are always a minority themselves bigotry succeeds only with a silent ascent of non-bigots only and So if you have privilege you should use it use your privilege By acting as allies acting not just having the right opinions We can help bring about equity Especially the more unequal a situation is the more important privileged allies are to making any progress So if you have privilege either real-world privilege like permanent access to the internet or money Or wiki privilege like not so much admin status simply Community status reputation experience with edits. I think is much more important Please use it and help us all not just the marginalized groups because helping marginalized knowledge and marginalized groups helps everyone I will You might say well you probably are a privileged wikipedia and right you've been around forever, etc Why don't you do it and the answer is I do and I try Even things like this just a few months ago. I tried to make and this is my last example. I realized we're running out of time I tried to make this small change to weak English wikipedia's Notability page and the change I wanted to make is to add to the sentence that said Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability Okay, the availability of sources itself is a good test for notability full stop. That's what it said I added it is a good test for notability if the subject's culture or country is Generally well covered in secondary literature Do you see the nuance I tried to add there if there's generally good coverage of this culture? And this person is not covered in that coverage then maybe it's a good test of notability But if the entire country or culture is badly covered in secondary sources Then the existence or non-existence of sources is not a good test of notability That's all this sentence says it doesn't say and therefore we should have an article about it It doesn't say that it just says it's this is not a good test in that case But I was reverted I Thought this is a perfectly reasonable Qualification to make to this I didn't set out to really revolutionize notability I just encountered that sentence and it rang false to me So I made this change boldly, you know as we do on Wikipedia. I was reverted. That's okay, too If you've been bold and you've been reverted you discuss So I went to the discussion page and I explained what I just said, right? I Explained and I said I think my change reflects this logic But other established editors Interpreted my proposed change as an attack on any limitation of notability Or that I proposed to accept all original research Which is simply not there in the text that I added but that is how they interpreted it and therefore said When a country or other context does not have a literature of reliable sources It's sad, but means that those topics are not notable by our standards period Or it doesn't matter why references are or not available only whether they are Period You can still see this on the talk page of the notability page on Wikipedia and my favorite for years The Wikimedia Foundation has been floating the idea of improving coverage of underrepresented cultures by allowing oral histories or other primary or unconventional sourcing it always goes down like the Hindenburg the Zeppelin Under assault by a battalion of flamethrower-wielding editors. I Don't know why that metaphor similarly was necessary But yeah, so this was welcomed Yeah, so with seven supporters of my change and ten against it status quo remained With more allies we can have the numbers. This was just a tiny example of Attempting a tiny change from a privileged position that could have worked Didn't as it turned out because people didn't show up. I encourage you to show up The sources I've used are these two Articles by these two scholars that I've mentioned. I will tweet the slides of course Thank you for listening. Please share this