However, the writer is wary about attempts to raise the profile of members of a particular team.
By requiring her students to create new entries about female researchers for the online dictionary, a Meredith College science professor is attempting to” correct gender partiality” on Wikipedia.
According to a news release on the college’s business, Professor Natasha Butz’s” Women in Science” class, which the personal North Carolina college considers to be so crucial that it just made the decision to offer the course more frequently.
According to the content, Butz, an associate professor of natural science, gave her drop group the assignment to write an article for one of two Wikipedia tasks: WikiProject Women Researchers and Under-representation of Science and Women in Africa.
As part of a larger energy by Wikipedia to” shop and cure the widespread bias with people on Wikipedia,” the WikiProject Ladies Scientists is “dedicated to ensuring quality and protection of biographies of feminine scientists.”
Similar to how Under-representation of women in science and people in Africa addresses underrepresentation of women in science by encouraging people to “write Wikipedia histories of South African women experts,” according to its Wikipedia website.
The College Fix‘s email on February 27 immediately asked Butz to follow up with her the following month. She did not respond to two more letters from The Fix in the previous two months, though.
Butz told Meredith’s media section the” Women in Science” program is “relevant” as a means of correcting an “imbalance in the picture of men and women in STEM”.
The college cited a poll from 2021 that found that just 17 % of Wikipedia histories featured female subjects.
Meredith’s science department recently made the decision to change the course schedule from once every two years to once every year. According to the school’s fall semester training schedule, the course will be offered once more in the fall.
While some applaud the work, others, like writer Mary Grabar, see issues.
” I’m always wary about like attempts to raise people of a certain team,” Grabar told The Fix via email next month. She is the author of the Dissident Prof Education Project, an organization that fights” the re-education of America.”
Grabar said that some professions are typically adult- or female-dominated, which perhaps contribute to the perception of discrimination. But, seeming overrepresentation of one party does not always entail discrimination, she said.
” If only 17 % of the biographies are dedicated to women, then we should ask why”, she told The Fix. For one, generally, people have not had the same chance to thrive in public life. Nor did they feel the same wish”.
According to Grabar, the doctor and students” may look at the data on women’s preferences and abilities” in a research group like the one at Meredith, which shows that “populations in the index show a bias for some occupations.”
Some individuals may “excel in professions dominated by another group”, and these individuals” should be given equal opportunities” – which the law has guaranteed for the past 60 years, Grabar said.
As long as “women who have accomplished as much as … men” are treated equally,” I do n’t see what the problem is”, Grabar said.
The Meredith class is n’t the first to have students” correct gender bias” on Wikipedia. In 2015, The Fix reported about similar efforts by other universities – including Brown, Yale, and Penn State – to combat” sexism” and “write feminist thinking” into the online encyclopedia.
Since then, others have followed suit, with WikiEdu reporting , one professor’s students produced 68 biographies for female scientists in under a year.
MORE: Feds to Dole Out$ 200K to Study Why Wikipedia is Sexist
IMAGE: WikiProject Women scientists/Wikipedia
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