Twoseparate polls about eight years both showed at that time a gender distribution of about 35 to 41% female (one with various options) and male of about 57%.
Tworecent polls show numbers 28ish% female, and about 70 to 72% male now.
Understood that polls may not reflect reality but whatever bias they have is likely consistent and together these polls demonstrate pretty conclusively that our female membership is trending significantly downwards over time. That in fact surprised me but it is clearly the case.
I agree with others that such is a problem.
Why has such occurred? Well the way any business determines is with market research of those who use the service and there are many female Dopers stating that they find the current atmosphere to be off-putting to their enjoying spending time here. That does not mean that the Board has become more sophomoric or cruder than it ever was, it may reflect that the target demographic of women who would be interested in the nerdy and argumentative content that is this board’s mainstay have changed their tastes over the years and now are less tolerant of having to deal or even having to ignore content that they do not like. Don’t matter. The fact remains that this board is less frequented by female content providers and consumers than it had been.
Should acton be taken to address this trend? If so what action?
Should more be covered under “don’t be a jerk”? We allow a lot of posting actions that large numbers of other posters find annoying and personally I think posters who persist in those behaviors knowing that they annoy others (be it “Regards …” or “… quarry …” or others) are being jerks, but the ruling has been to allow and tell the annoyed to just scroll past. My first impulse was that this is self-same, lots of other threads, ignore the ones you don’t like. But it is, in this case at least, as a matter of fact not just impressions; it is something that is causing people to leave or at least not stay.
The balance is not losing the essential irreverent nature of this place or making it into one with a lack of diverse content. Having only “safe space” content is not a great solution either (IMHO).
Other ideas than that broader interpretation of the jerk rule?
It’s a tough line to draw. Obviously the best solution would be if guys just thought a little bit more about how they are coming off.
From a rules perspective, I guess the “no Penthouse forum” rule could be expanded/fleshed out.
Structurally, the place could probably use a few more female moderators. Since Spice Weasel stepped down, only Ivory Tower Denizen remains an active female mod, afaik. Ellen Cherry seems pretty inactive. If ITD wasn’t on staff, I really don’t know how the Skald shit would have worked out.
Me either. Also, I am female and have never seen or participated in any polls like the ones you describe, to the best of my knowledge. So maybe your numbers aren’t so reliable.
If you’re concerned about the putative reduction in representation by women, how can it not matter why they left?
Some observations:
Active membership of the board as a whole is down. Women may have left at a faster rate than men, or fewer women may be coming on board than men, or both.
We can’t, in fact, know why people have left, unless they return to tell us (or mention it on other boards that people here might also participate in). We can only know what current posters tell us about what they think and feel about the issue.
Similarly, we can’t know why anyone, including women, may have looked at the board and decided they weren’t interested enough to register.
Finally, and in conclusion, I don’t think there is any point in trying to change the board culture in order to attract any specific set of people. If we try to change board culture (and I think we should) it should be for reasons that follow from the basic “don’t be a jerk” rule, doing our best to listen to current posters to help us refine our understanding and our behavior. With luck and persistence, those cultural and behavioral changes may change the trend over time. I think that’s the best we can hope for.
Every poster has to decide for him or herself whether they like the board well enough to remain and participate, and work to make it better, or whether they give up and leave. It feels to me like we may be at a turning point. This board may end up as an obnoxious boys’ club, or it can move towards increased enlightenment. I hope it’s the latter.
This is patently false. We’ve said countless times over the last few weeks it’s the tolerance of the often thinly-veiled sexism and misogyny that makes us feel unwelcome. Just because you don’t want to believe something doesn’t make it untrue.
I suspect that the numbers are real and that it has something to do with the rise of other web spaces. Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram all have a strong female skew. Pinterest in particular has a big gender split, and also saw dramatic growth in the last 8 years.
It is no coincidence, I suspect, that those spaces also allow users some control over the misogyny content in their feeds.
I only participated in one of the polls, doesn’t make the other 3 invalid.
I think the links I gave DSeid might have a time limit, they were directly to results instead to the thread: Gender
But do you really think the misogyny has ramped up over the last 8 years? What I believe DSeid is saying is that maybe the sexism has stayed the same but women are now less tolerant of it. Society has moved in the last decade and as Richard Parker noted, there’s a lot more options out there if a female netizen doesn’t want to put up with the level here.
I don’t know about average content - the juvenile “show me your boobs” crap may have declined slightly.
But the rising activity of MRA-types on the internet in the last decade has certainly led to more threads about that ilk. Generally all of those discussions ends up dripping with misogyny, even if it is sometimes just a few posters doing most of the damage.
:rolleyes: You’ve spent the last few days actively participating in virtually every thread on this topic, yet seem to have learned nothing. The complaints are clearly about behavior that takes place in other forums.
You are the only one who has a problem with the Pit. Which is bizarre, considering that’s where you spend most of your time.
Come now, if we are interested in recruiting octopus’s wife, then clearly we need to abolish the Pit, what with the insults and the potty language and the comments about wombs.