This post (that I originally published in Spanish here) is about an initiative I have been involved in lately, and that I love to bits – Editatona, the first effort in Latin America to reduce the gender gap in Wikipedia. We held the first one on Jan 31st, and the awesome collective of feminists behind this is currently working on a how-to that other orgs/individuals can use. Meanwhile…
(This past weekend, all of us were the Editatona. Thanks to Luchadoras TV for the great photo)
“What surprises you?
What makes you feel grateful?”
Lately, I’ve been in a coaching process that basically begins with those two questions. My coaching is a topic for another post; those questions are for this one.
For personal and professional reasons, the Editatona we held last Saturday was a breakthrough in my life. Even then, it was hard for me to decide on what I should write about it. It is a little strange; for having been an event of just over 30 women, it has been impressively well documented. There’s this great video by the ladies over at Luchadoras TV (and the previous show), the recording of Carmen’s intro to wiki editing, the media coverage (especially on national TV), the discussion on Twitter, several blog posts…
The Editatona lives in all this evidence. We don’t need another chronicle or a description of what happened. My fixation on writing this post is to share two of the reflections that have stuck with me, in a spirit that would make my coach proud: what surprised me, and what I’m grateful for after this event.
What surprises me
I am genuinely surprised, just as all the organizers are, that, in the 21st century, the main topic of heated discussion around this event is the fact that women decided to organize with other women to make an event for women. With no men involved.
I thought there would be strong questions around the proposed topics for editing. That there would be different types of feminisms that wouldn’t be able to reconcile during the event and that it could lead to a potential editing mess. Damn it: I even thought someone would attack that we are doing this from our NGOs.
But nope: nobody cared about any of that. What did matter, though, is that we decided on having an event made by women for other women.
Because there are some men who are more convinced feminists than some women (I agree). Because it is impossible to seek gender equality if you discriminate someone because of their sex (subject to debate, but let’s say I agree). Because if we ban men from coming we are closing the door to other women (I agree). Because we are doing the same to them that they are doing to us (I don’t agree). Because there can’t be a complete feminist event without men involved (direct quote, and I’ll just omit my judgement on this one).
At this point, I’m not interested in justifying again the reasons why that choice was made (in a collective after a long period of discussion, by the way). I will simply say that, after the event, I still think we acted with perfect coherence with our mission (which never was to promote immediate gender equality), and that this allowed an environment that led to the participation of some women that wouldn’t have participated otherwise. And whose participation seems a lot more important to me than that of the three men (literally three) that would have shown up had this rule not been in place.
Will this be different in other editatonas? I don’t know. It’s possible that it will be in some; I suspect it won’t be in others. We will take a look again at the missions we have for each, and the best ways to accomplish them.
What I’m most grateful for
“Collaboration” is the most overused concept in speech, and the most underused one in practice. According to everyone, we are the most collaborative bunch, the living proof of ubuntu spirit, and all team work is kicks and laughs. In my limited experience, we couldn’t be farther from the truth.
And I get why this is so. Collaborating makes a process that would typically last two hours extend to a whole week. It raises the chances of having misunderstandings. Come on – not everything in the realm of collaboration is beautiful. Actually, collaborating is much more difficult than not doing it at all.
But what’s real is that true collaboration is worth each of those hours of work, each of those difficulties. The richness that we could see consolidated in the Editatona couldn’t have been emulated with a different process. Each of the organizers added something unique to the event; each of the participants brought new perspectives to a content creation exercise; and the strength of all of us together led us to walk along a path that at least I couldn’t walk on my own throughout the entire year I fantasized with this initiative.
It all starts small (in some cases, with a DM on Twitter), and it will likely remain stuck in that size. What I’m most grateful for after the Editatona is the privilege of participating in a small but strong network of feminists with varied interests – that got together to make this one particular mad project get big, but that I know will continue getting together to see many others grow exponentially.
The second Editatona in Mexico City is in the planning. We will keep everyone posted – but I can say meanwhile that it will be in March, and we will be editing articles about women in different fields (including yours). Prepare!