Why is iNat male-dominated?

I just had a good smile at your post - and thank you! Here in New Jersey there are a lot of active women on iNaturalist, also on the leaderboards :)

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I think there’re just more deep scientists with tons of photos, collected through years, or will to identify. There’s nothing that stops women to get accounts on iNat.
About some communities. All local birds clubs for school students consist of 99% femles, but there’re much more professional ornithologists in the end. It’s hard to get a job with profession like this, and one you get is mostly a hard work that needs really good physical training, that job gets more males, on the other hand there’re some teaching vacancies that get more women, and only in last years such job has something to do with nature itself and outside work.

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Sexism is well-documented and reported. The patriarchy is strong. I don’t see any reason why iNaturalist users would be any different. This is definitely something that affects ALL of us, even male users. Thanks for bringing this to attention. At the very least we should all be more aware of how we interact on iNaturalist. Do you feel more confident correcting an observation posted by someone that might seem to be female? How do you phrase comments?

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I don’t generally notice the observer of an observation. A day or two ago, I joined a project to help a poster ID a leaf disease, only to notice at the end of it that it was in fact myself that I was helping. I am more verbose when I think the observer might still be using the platform, but I wouldn’t have a clue about their gender.

Should people be trying to be more aware of the gender they are posting to, or less?

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Personally, I don’t think it’s important to know the gender (or the age) of anyone while interacting about observations. I think the important thing is to reflect on whether one responds differently to people based on gender or age. For example, if a person wouldn’t write “NO!!!” to an adult male, they shouldn’t do it to anyone, and if a person wouldn’t correct an ID for an adult male assuming the male might know, then they shouldn’t correct it for anyone. For the record, I have noticed the first example, but haven’t noticed the second on iNat.

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Survey results are up! https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/results-from-recent-brief-survey-of-inat-users/6697

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To clarify my comments: When I suggest people be aware of themselves when they are posting or correcting, I really just mean we MEN have to be look at our behavior carefully. When we examine our behavior with an open mind, critically, we may see that we come up short at times, and those times are powerful lessons for us.

Women have been telling us this for centuries, and we’ve mostly been ignoring them. Literally.

So yes, MEN should be aware of what we are thinking, our attitude, and so forth, whenever we interact in all places on the internet and in real life, but also on iNaturalist. The time for being oblivious and protesting that we’re “neutral” is in the past – we’re not neutral, we were socialized to behave in many ways that are harmful, especially to humans who aren’t male.

Let’s not make the “I’m gender blind” version of “I’m color blind” argument; that’s ignorant, lazy, and especially harmful.

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We should treat people the same, IMO. Women do stereo typing themselves. They should be included in your MEN suggestions as well.

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Everyone is judgmental by nature. Everyone stereotypes. Everyone should be self-aware when they interact with each other. The self-awareness should come with awareness of historical and societal flaws and with empathy for how others may have been affected. Sometimes society needs to rectify wrongs. These things can all be true at once. I think we’re really a pretty good group of people here.

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Having spent 30 years teaching field biology at a women’s college (now Coed) the question was how do we get women to go into science. If we see an imbalance in iNaturalist we should be asking how do we make walking in the woods feel safe. I hope the old stereotypes are going, when I trained Boy Scout leaders increasingly women were filling the role of Scoutmasters.

No mater what our own gender is the question is what do we need to do to make exploring the world around us safe again. Historically women were the first key naturalists, since their knowledge of herbs was critical to keep the family and to keep the tribe healthy. They had learned from their mothers, and the lore passed down was beyond any thing we can achieve in iNat.

When I was last out I met two guys scouting out a place to put a deer stand, both were armed, one with a revolver and the other with a rifle. This was out of fear for what they might encounter in the woods. If this is becoming the view of the wilderness I am saddened.

So what do we need to do to make the out of doors a place for all? How do we make our children (grandchildren in my case) girls or boys go into to it with wonder, and not with fear.

We need to recognize the progress that has been made, and encourage everyone to know the wild places around them, as a place of peace and renewal. We need to invite others to join us on our walks, to be the ones to record the observations that we make, to be bitten by the bug.

When their is an imbalance the question should be what can I do about it, how can I work to change it?

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Alright. Since I’ve now received some interesting responses privately, and now you’ve quoted me, I guess I’ll have to say something.

Really the only reason I’m certain it doesn’t matter (and honestly I’m not still convinced it does), is because I personally can’t see any possible way that iNat is discouraging anyone on a gender-oriented basis. If anyone can really prove that iNat is definitely excluding a fair proportion of people in the sense of this topic, I will certainly be willing to change my mind.

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It would be interesting to have a survey of a representative sample of people (not just females) who used to be on iNat and now are not, with that question asked.

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Not sure if this angle has been explored:

Obstacles can take two forms, as far as I can see… those that block or impede/deter participation, and the other form is where desire to participate is absent.

A lot of the women (and men too) that I talk to about iNat and in particular about night time hunting for spiders the response is generally not “oh, I can’t do that because…”, it’s “why on earth would I want to do that?”. But after a night out hunting spiders, many of them are buzzing and want to do it again.

This “other” reason for possible imbalances in representation of participation are largely what iNat is about anyway, so it is highly appropriate to be talking about how we can improve ANY demographic participation, let alone gender.

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Obviously the website is fairly neutral, in that it doesn’t ask what your gender is and such. It’d be about the environment the people here create in their interactions with each other, by how they ID and how they treat others’ IDs and how they speak to each other in the forums and so on. There’s no way of surveying women who’ve left iNat.

What this means is, the only way you’re going to get any “evidence” that women have a harder time here than men is by listening to women’s stories about being belittled, dismissed, excluded, etc. And there are several women here in this thread telling you about their experiences.

That means you have proof. If you are still not convinced, that means you’re not taking women’s stories of their experiences here seriously, which means you are being sexist and actively making the environment unpleasant for women!

A nice way I’ve seen it put is that in a computer game, men are on the lowest difficulty setting. Even in a relatively benign environment like iNat, men are presumed competent, are seen as more assertive in a good way and taken seriously because of that, etc. The constant negative effects of even mild sexism (which are impossible to police with moderators most of the time) are enough to make a person go “you know what, this isn’t a nice place to be, I’d rather give my time and attention to another website instead.” And then you end up with a website where women are marginalised, and very little ability to get “proof” of how it happened.

You could try what some curious men do on OKcupid: make an account with a female name and obviously female avatar, and interact in observations and forum posts like you would normally, and see how people treat you. A bit of a google could help, something like “man makes account as woman on [OKcupid/male-dominated online game/Tinder]”?

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I really can’t see how James is making the iNat environment unpleasant for women. Are there any women following this thread that find James to be the cause of any unpleasantness?

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I was on Google Plus for years. From the early - where are all the girrrls - to yes - an Australian fashion photographer using his photo of a drop dead gorgeous model to show dubious males what Eve baiting is about.

Think of this as an iceberg effect - a few women speaking out on behalf of the silent majority who quietly move to a friendlier place.

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I don’t know how to make it any clearer! To paraphrase myself: By reading the accounts of women who find it unpleasant or hostile to be here, and openly considering it not proof enough that iNaturalist is a place that is unpleasant or hostile towards women.

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yes, I found these comments very off-putting

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I did. I can remember a lot of maths stuff with my daughter very early on, and one thing that stands out, was teaching her base addition when she was 4. I was quite impressed with how quickly she picked it up (I had mainly been working with decimal and octal in examples with her), and a mate who thought maybe she had just memorised the answers tried her with some base-7 sums, and she could do them.

[but I get your point, it’s exception rather than rule]

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I don’t think it’s productive of helpful for people (especially men who haven’t experienced it) to be denying the existence of systemic sexism in Western/US culture in this thread. Just because you haven’t experienced it on iNat doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen there. And if you are male you kind of can’t experience it? That’s part of the point.

Not looking to debate this either as I don’t need to be yet another man mansplaining racism. But as someone who has made the mistake of excess tone deaf posting before, i encourage all of you guys to consider whether you really need to post here and really have something valuable to add.

(and yes I just posted. Sorry.)

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