Wikipedia and gender bias

9 Responses to Wikipedia and gender bias

1. Polichinello says:

   February 11, 2011 at 8:19 pm

   You underestimate the excuse-making capability of contemporary feminism.
2. Kevin Lawrence says:

   February 11, 2011 at 9:00 pm

   “If you don’t like to debate, perhaps you should avoid the debate club rather than calling for its reconstitution into a mutual-agreement society.”

   Perfect.

   Heather, I hope you’ll continue to let us know when you have articles published. I am a big fan of your writing and your relentless pursuit of reason in debates and would be delighted to have more opportunities to experience your work.
3. John says:

   February 12, 2011 at 3:23 am

   It is an interesting debate about the op-ed pages. I think part of it is just that men’s and women’s brains are wired so differently. For instance, I very rarely read fiction written by women. It’s not that women aren’t good writers, it’s just that they generally don’t write about the things I want to read about. To a lesser extent, the same is true with op-ed pages (excluding Heather MacDonald of course 🙂 ) If a newspaper is going to choose who is going to be on the op-ed pages, it worth having both some men and some women on the committee who chooses.
4. Mike H says:

   February 12, 2011 at 3:42 am

   Feminists will never admit to any natural gender differences, their entire theory house of cards would collapse. It must be society or really about five disciplines of “social science” would basically become pointless overnight and lots of jobs and careers would disappear.
5. Susan says:

   February 12, 2011 at 7:29 pm

   I can only speak from my own experience, but I found a lot less sexism in the police department where I worked than in the magazine office where I worked. The cops didn’t seem to care whether you were a girl or a boy as long as you were good at what you did.
6. biologist says:

   February 12, 2011 at 10:28 pm

   Many of the commenters at Slate were distracted with the question of whether gender differences were “innate”. However, this is the wrong question to ask. It’s the wrong level of analysis.

   The two hypotheses being considered aren’t “nature” versus “nurture”, but rather “distribution” versus “discrimination”. The differences in the representation of women among op-ed contributors could be due to a difference in the distribution of traits that predispose towards becoming a op-ed contributor between men and women — this is the distribution hypothesis. Else, the distribution of traits traits could be the same among men and women but gender discrimination in selection of op-ed contributors skews the results — this is the discrimination hypothesis.

   Put simply, the example of Wikipedia strongly favors the distribution hypothesis over the discrimination hypothesis because discrimination is implausible in the context of Wikipedia. Granted the evidence of Wikipedia does not logically rule out that discrimination explains the differences in op-ed contributions, but this new evidence clearly should shift the a posteriori probability towards the distribution hypothesis.
7. Sophia says:

   February 15, 2011 at 3:37 am

   I dunno; sexist assertions about women don’t necessarily have such a great track record! We’ve also been told that women are inherently inferior at mathematics and hard sciences, yet 38% of the enrolled student body of ultra-elite rigorous CalTech (avg IQ ~140) is now female. Meanwhile, only about 1.3% are black. Sex differences in intelligence are so weak and inconsistent that sexism may well go a long way as a viable explanation. Differences in intelligence between population groups (esp. Ashk. Jew v. white gentile and white American v. black American) are much larger, much more consistent, and most interestingly, much more taboo!

   If men are really more more rational and dynamic, funny then that the most patriarchal societies (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran) are actually the most stunted and stagnant. To put it scientifically, hyperpatriarchal societies are shitholes. Sweden – the least patriarchal country – has its problems, but ‘feminist’ Swedes don’t behead anyone for having a girly mag or a six pack of beer. The ‘nanniest’ of the ‘nanny states’ is far more free than the most male dominated of countries.

   Just because there is much truth to HBD does not mean it will neatly conform to right-wing preferences. Racial authoritarianism and conservatism are strongly negatively correlated with IQ. That right there should give authoritarian right-wingers pause!
8. Sophia says:

   February 15, 2011 at 3:48 am

   ‘Feminists will never admit to any natural gender differences, their entire theory house of cards would collapse.’

   There *are* natural sex differences, but it does not follow that women are innately and substantially less intelligent than men (of the same population group).

   There are many conservatives who selectively (mis)interpret HBD to fit their own unscientific (often prescientific!) opinions which they originally adopted for non-rational reasons.
9. David says:

   February 16, 2011 at 12:32 am

   This blog
   http://antifeministsite.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-york-times-claims-wikipedia-biased.html
   said the New York Times criticisms were a farce. It pointed out an article in Wikipedia titled “Gender and Education” that does seem to subtlely state women are smarter than men. This would make any claims about bias against women a joke. I haven’t searched but if Wikipedia has other articles like this then I would say the website is biased against men not women.

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