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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

> What wikipedia and open source have in common is "text-based interaction", and I think that is offputting to some people, in particular women. I don't think it is surprising that female programmers would prefer interaction in a workplace or school to text-based interaction.

Why do women write more books than men? Why do women read more books than men?

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Citation? It's not obvious to me that either is true.

I am not part of the literary world but apparently it is "male-dominated".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/29/men-women-vida-coun...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9977417/Women-write...

It's really clear for readers of fiction.

http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/woman-read-more-fict...

As for writing: I got the quote from "Open Book", a BBC Radio Four programme.

> Women write and buy vastly more books, and more fiction, than men, yet you wouldn’t guess it to see how literary prizes are discussed in newspapers.

Here's an article that mentions the Open Book programme http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/feb/25/londo...

In the OSZE PISA studies women/girls are better than their male counterparts in reading comprehension in every single country in the studies.

Because those are solitary endeavors, not "interactions"

I don't think your distinction (or judgment) here changes OP's point. It might be a solitary, textual endeavor, but the question remains: why are women less prone to dedicate time to this sort of stuff.

The answer OP poised was that Wikipedia and Open Source require text based interactions with others in the community - beyond the actual exercise of writing wikipedia pages and writing code. Thats the difference here, not that women don't like reading or writing.

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