Five lessons from writing a biography for a woman from every country in the world
It's the usual stuff, but with an interesting twist in the tail.....
LGBTQ activists taking cameras into women's public bathrooms to illustrate Wikipedia?5. Content gaps extend to images and data
Writing these biographies has made me more aware of other gaps in other projects, for example around menstrual hygiene. I’m currently adding images of sanitary bins to Wikimedia Commons. When I added my first last October, there were just two images of these important objects most often found in women’s toilets and no item for a sanitary bin on Wikidata! In contrast, there were over 200 pictures of condom machines (mostly from men’s toilets)!
What could possibly go wrong.
It's also odd that she didn't seem to also mention a related gender gap. Even though she must have seen it on her travels.
At time of writing, condom machine (T-H-L) has a Wikipedia article. It is, of course, utterly shit. Small, largely unreferenced, and thoroughly confused about its purpose. Perhaps even in violation of numerous WP:NOTS. And rather hilariously, I doubt the image chosen to illustrate it, is the best among a collection of over 200.
But it at least has an article. The patriarchy wins again.
Sanitary bin (T-H-L) isn't even a redirect. I don't even know where you would redirect it to. There's no related content in waste container (T-H-L).(Wikipedia's chosen title for "bin"). "Sanitary product" currently redirects to Feminine hygiene (T-H-L), which doesn't seem to cover waste management at all. Only after noticing the See Also link did I find a logical target.....Menstrual hygiene management#Disposal of used materials (T-H-L). And even that isn't really about feminine hygiene product bins. It has a picture of one though! Yay. It was added by you know who. Tampon (T-H-L) has an "Environment and waste" section, but it doesn't talk about sanitary bins specifically, and has no picture of one. Menstrual pad (T-H-L) doesn't even have such a section, nor does it really address waste disposal at all.
And of course, Lajmmoore has rather buried the elephant in the room here.
What about the feminine hygiene product machines? They exist, right?
Right?
Wikipedia doesn't seem to think so.
Commons does. And you know why.
So in conclusion, I don't get it. Not why feminist Wikipedia editors don't appear to be editing Wikipedia to address the content gap. Outside of biographies. That's a given.
I don't get that she knew both Wikipedia and Commons had a gender gap in the all important encylopedic topic of vending machines. So why did she choose to compare condom machines and sanitary bins? It's bananas and watermelons, isn't it?
What's her agenda? Because I'm as progressive as the next man, but if you think I'm only going to have sex with women in public bathrooms that have condom bins, think again lady!
