Wikipedia has some severe biases when it comes to what and who counts as notable. For instance, you can compare ”programming pattern” and ”knitting pattern” and try to guess which is a 50 year practice and which is as old as civilization...
That sort of topic bias is best solved by adding new contributors, but they will intrinsically have to be different sorts of persons, and historically that difference has caused issues for the newcomers: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/us/wikipedia-harassment-w...
If we don’t acknowledge sex differences in interests of subjects, then we fail to see the true problem, and thus an actual solution. Why is it taboo to say on average, one sex is more likely to take on a specific kind of work than another? Despite evidence [0] [1]
I’m all for increasing the opportunity for everyone to participate in specific subjects. Yes, at one point in time oppression from one sex against another was real in intellectual pursuits, be it academia or certain areas of interest. And there are instances of it today. But it’s not as pervasive as so many commentators or inclusion boards want it to be.
But to try and get a 50/50 split, or whatever arbitrary ratio, is madness. It implies personality is 50/50 split, as personality is directly related to interests, among other factors (such as writing dry, technical content, which men (on average) tend to gravitate towards). These ratios are impractical, and verifiably false. Men and women on average have widely different personalities, based purely on biological sex. Evolutionarily this makes sense, as each had a specific, important role. Today we have the luxury of looking past the necessity for adhering to these roles, but denying they’re not a part of our genetics is denying reality.
It’s no different than asking why person X dislikes subject Y. Is it because of institutional oppression? Rarely, yes. But for a vast majority of people, person X just doesn’t like subject Y. And if on average, sex Z is disinterested in subject Y, then naturally we’ll see a disparity between the representation of each sex in subject Y.
Most people who knit are not biologically male. There exists male knitters, as there exists male nurses. Is there a cabal oppressing male knitting on an institutional level? Doubt it.
Using inclusivity as a goal has unfortunately become a loaded word. It’s now more akin to price control in a market, essentially forcing a metric value that is arbitrarily chosen, without understanding the implications. I’m not saying this instance in particular is using the word in such a way (though the tone of the article leads me to believe so), but for a vast majority of cases this is how it’s interpreted. We should not be striving for equality of outcomes, but equality of opportunity.
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201711/the-truth... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19883140/