User blog comment:WikiPim/Is Wikia Staff showing it's real face?/@comment-13301-20111108224714/@comment-8-20111109234635

I've been trying not to jump in, but I guess this one is pushing a few buttons.

Wikia cannot, and does not, hire by gender. We hire the person who applies who best fits the requirements of the job. Sometimes it can be hard to find someone who is skilled in every area we need, so we may hire someone with skills in one area who who can learn others (for example, an experienced community manager with support skills and the ability to learn wiki markup).

This "girls" stuff started because of a leaked comment about the current group of CC admins being male. That is an area where I would like to see more balance, but not in some sort of "women taking over the wooorrrrlld" kinda way. Given the general make up of the most active people here right now (and the conversation so far) I'd say it's likely the next admin will be male. I have no idea what the gender of the next person we hire will be, it depends who applies.

On sexism: I realize that some talking here do not have English as their first language. So I offer this hint: if you replace the word "girl" with "boy" (or "children" for mixed gender) and it sounds odd... then I would suggest the choice of words is a bad one, and you are using a diminutive an a way that some women may find offensive. The word “girl” refers to female children, and is often used as a way to diminish and discount women. Notice that there are very few instances of the same thing happening with "boy" and "men". As a 39 year old woman, I do not consider myself a girl, and would rather not be called one.