Talk:List of American women's firsts

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Proposed lede

EQ has reverted my proposed lede, which is as follows (and is taken from List of women's firsts, with a few modifications):

"This is a list of women's firsts, noting the first time that an American woman or women achieved a given historical feat that had heretofore been the domain of men. A shorthand phrase for this development is "breaking the gender barrier" or "breaking the glass ceiling." Inclusion on the list is reserved for achievements by American women that have significant historical impact."

The current lede is unsourced and basically an essay - but we don't need an essay to justify this list. The proposed lede is better for several reasons:
  1. It specifies that this is about the first time an American woman has achieved a feat. Thus, it's not about the first time an American woman from California did X, or the first time an American women who had job X did different job Y, because the number of combinations once you start intersecting American woman + some characteristic she has + some thing she does becomes endless
  2. It clarifies that the achievement should have significant historical impact (so this list doesn't start to collect trivia and random sports records, which are broken constantly, but usually not notable enough for a list such as this)
  3. Finally, is clarifies that the accomplishment should somehow be breaking a gender barrier.
I believe this list should not be for instances where something novel and interesting was done for the very first time and it happened to be a woman. If no-one (or, in the case of this list, no American) has ever accomplished a given feat - for example, swimming to Florida without a cage - then we cannot establish that there is a significant gender barrier which prevented women from accomplishing same, since no man was able to do it either. This isn't to say that gender barriers don't exist in these instances, but rather that it is original research to conclude that the gender barrier was a key or determining factor, since we have no way of knowing what prevented men from doing the same thing.
In a way, it can be seen as condescending to list such "first-ever" instances here, since the accomplishment is colored by the nature of the list and the vast majority of the contents which are about people doing some "first" thing while being a woman. I'd much rather place such historical first-evers in mixed-gender lists.
OTOH, being the first female secretary of state, when we've had a tradition of 200 years of male secretaries of state, is a notable breaking of the glass ceiling and very worthy of note. I think we should focus this list on instances or historical accomplishments where men had previously been the only ones to do so. If a person is indeed the very first person of any gender to do something, it should go in some other appropriate place in Category:Lists of firsts. This list should be focused on breaking the glass ceiling, similar to the broader List of women's firsts.
Indeed, if we look at how sources generally treat these instances, when someone is the first WOMAN to do something, they will say "X is the first woman to be named ambassador". OTOH, when a woman does something that has never been done by anyone, the sources say "X is the first person to do Z" - they don't feel the need to qualify with "woman" because she's the first person, anywhere, to have done X.
If we add "human firsts who happened to be women" to this list, then people reading the list may be confused and may believe that some instances which are literally "human firsts" are really only "women firsts".
EQ says If a woman did something significant before a man, it is still an accomplishment.. Absolutely! There is no debate on this point. What I am debating is whether we should list all such instances here, as it then becomes a hybrid list, of women-firsts, and of people-first-who-happen-to-be-women, I think the resultant confusion for the reader is not worth it and it is a bit dismissive of the accomplishments of people-first-who-happen-to-be-women who blasted through much more than a gender barrier.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:50, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Another problem with listing novel firsts here, rather than in a gender-neutral list, is that in some cases we don't even have a gender neutral list into which that first would belong! And that demonstrates an even bigger problem - that by placing it here, we somehow believe that a woman accomplishing something amazing for the first time in human history is MORE worthy of note than the same exact accomplishment by a man - that's a violation of NPOV! There's nothing all that special about being the first secretary of state - SOMEONE had to do that job - but if you have 200 years of only male secretaries of state, then you have a gender barrier and overcoming same IS worthy of note. OTOH, if someone does something truly historical from a human perspective, it is a victory for the human race, not the female gender, and should be celebrated accordingly in a mixed-gender list. Mixing such examples up with women entering roles that they had heretofore been excluded from on the basis of sexism is a completely different kettle of fish. Thus, if we don't have a generic/gender neutral list of such "first events in history", then we certainly shouldn't list it here, as it means it will be somewhat ghettoized into the "women" list.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:02, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Women's firsts" should include some events where women were first. Women's history as an academic study is not solely about documenting gender barrier breakthroughs. Removing every instance where women did something of historical significance before a man did it is against the spirit of showing significant firsts achieved by a woman. __ E L A Q U E A T E 18:59, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But this thinking reinforces the notion of women as a special type of human. If what they did was the first for humankind, their accomplishment should be in a mixed-gender list, not here.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:10, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's a field of history with special considerations, it's not about placing women above men. The only reinforcing that goes on from your suggestions is reinforcing an idea that women can never do anything first, which is incorrect and anti-historical. And a mixed-gender/mixed nationality list should draw on all significant historical events of all historical actors, while a focussed list (say "American") can duplicate events found in the greater list. __ E L A Q U E A T E 19:40, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
e.g.. First person on the moon, fits fine on a specific list of US accomplishments, and it fits great on a list of human accomplishments.__ E L A Q U E A T E
Who said women can never do anything first? You're missing the point - by placing them on a list such as this one, you are implicitly saying "She was able to do it first and it's extra special because she's a woman" - but it's not! If no man ever did feat X, that doesn't make it more amazing that a woman did so first...To think otherwise is to believe that women are somehow inferior to men or less likely to accomplish great things. When no man has accomplished something before a woman, it means whatever gender barriers were there were smaller than other barriers which even the men were unable to overcome, since otherwise the man would have done it first.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:28, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Putting interesting historical achievements first done by a woman on a list of interesting achievements first done by a women is not controversial. I would happily put the Wright brothers on a list of US achievements without worrying that I was somehow belittling other countries.__ E L A Q U E A T E 20:48, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Apples and oranges, very little relation whatsoever... I'm not talking about nationality-specific lists.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another problem with this list is NPOV. We could, for example, build a list of List of American men's firsts and fill it up with instances where MEN were the first to do something - the first president, the first senator, etc. Then we could replicate the whole thing with a gender neutral List of firsts in American politics, of which the "first men" would be a subset thereof. But the men's list would never survive here, and it would be ridiculous to say "Washington was the first MALE president of the United States of America". Yet, you want to do the same thing here for women. It violates NPOV. Again, if we haven't seen fit to create a gender neutral list of "First people to cross some particularly nasty body of water without a shark cage", then why should we celebrate the first woman to do so on this woman-specific list? It actually WEAKENS her accomplishment to do so.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:28, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Luckily, Wikipedia is not just this one list. We have lists covering most aspects of general history, subdivided by era, focus, geography, endeavor, etc. If you have a problem with the very foundational idea of women's history, then it explains why you're going around deleting women's history. It's pretty basic. Just because we might have a list for some aspect of African American history, doesn't mean we then require a "White-only" history list. __ E L A Q U E A T E 20:48, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why not? Why not create "List of European American firsts"? or "List of Irish-American firsts"? Would you consider it an "Irish-American first" if the thing in question had actually first been done by an Italian-American 5 years earlier? Would you say "Well, yes, but this is the first time an Irish-American did it!" That's what you're trying to do here... If something has never been done before, then it is celebration enough to list it on a gender neutral list, and keep this list focused on women's firsts. And stop suggesting that I'm "deleting women's history" or I have a problem with "the foundational idea of women's history" and calling my edits "anti-women's history vandalism" - it's bullshit namecalling and it's offensive and beneath you. I'm not removing things from Women's history, I'm arguing over the inclusion criteria of this very specific list of "firsts" and what the definition of a "women's first" is - the problem is, we have TWO definitions here - the first time something was done by a woman that had been done before by men (thus demonstrating that she was overcoming a gender barrier), and the first time something was done by a woman that had never been done by anyone. I'm arguing that we should leave the second set of items out of this list, and put them into a gender-neutral list instead - first to avoid dual maintenance, but two because I think it's confusing to mix the two together. Otherwise the entries must read: "X was the first woman to do Y", and "A was the first person to do B" - you literally have to NOT call them a woman in order to make the point that they are the first person. It's silly.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think the fact they're on a list of "Women's firsts" will be sufficient that people won't get dizzy thinking they might not be women when we say they're the "first person" to do something. You certainly are deleting items off of a list of interest to the Women's History wikiproject. Do you want me to avoid saying that? Your theories about the non-NPOV-ness of having articles with a focus on women are a little weak. If you think the wikiproject should have corresponding "male" articles for every article they're interested in, then you should bring it up to them. Otherwise, we're talking about this list.__ E L A Q U E A T E 21:25, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So are you suggesting no-one can delete anything from this list without being accused of "deleting women's history"? It's bullshit EQ, and it's a good way to suppress good faith edits with scurrilous accusations, so you should knock it off. Calling me a vandal is offensive. Wikipedia editors regularly perform deep surgery to reduce listcruft, which is what I have done...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:42, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not my argument and a complete red herring. You weren't tidying; you were self-admittedly trying to change the scope of the list to exclude a class of achievements. I didn't say you couldn't delete "anything" (I might not re-add a couple of your deletions based on weight), just that your proposal isn't strong and you deleted things that have a place on the list.__ E L A Q U E A T E 22:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm using the example of men's lists as a reductio ad absurdum, I'm not proposing we create them. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to have a list of Men's firsts in fields where woman have traditionally held sway, but such a list would be rendered rather useless unless it was limited to things that women had done first. I think the same applies here - you're trying to squeeze two definitions of "first" into the same box, but one is of a completely different degree than the other. Perhaps a separate list could be made of Female pioneers or something similar, where we could add women who were the first in the world of any gender to accomplish feat X, but if the feat is that notable I'd much rather it be a mixed-gender list. I just think mixing them here is bad, since the reasons behind the accomplishments are quite different - men play professional football every day, but it's remarkable when women do so - but that's a completely different sort of remarkable from "The first person - anywhere - to discover radium".--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:42, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd much rather it be a mixed-gender list. It's not a zero sum game. Historical events are on multiple lists. Some women firsts are also human firsts. "Breaking the gender barrier" aren't the only interesting "firsts" achieved by women.__ E L A Q U E A T E 22:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think its debatable. Certainly the way reliable sources talk about it, they discuss "first woman to do X" differently than "first person to do X who is a woman" - there's a different level of interest. Why do we even care about first woman to do X when 500 men have done so? Entrenched gender bias. It's the ONLY reason I can think of that our society thinks it's worth talking about, and we consider it notable to have overcome such bias. On the other hand, "first person to do something, who happens to be a woman" - that's a completely different scope of innovation - she's not treading a path already worn by others of a different gender, she's treading a new path entirely! Imagine if the first person up Mt. Everest was a woman, and we said "How does it feel to be the first woman to climb Mt. Everest" - she would be offended! Saying that Marie Curie was the first woman to discover radiology could also be seen as offensive.
I don't disagree that both cases fall under the scope of women's history but combining them into a single list is a poor idea since the two are quite different. Additionally, if we have a list of "Women who did something for the first time that no-one has ever done", then it would be a LOT longer as well - first writer of a book that started the environmental movement, first computer programmer, and so on. Indeed, I think it could literally be considered offensive to list such instances together, because if you call someone "the first woman to do X" you are implying that a man did it before, but if a man DIDNT do it before, you wouldn't say "the first woman" - you'd say "the first person" or "the first human". There's room for flexibility here of course - for example, if a woman was the first person in the new cabinet post of Secretary of X (a newly-created post that had never had any male occupants) it would be reasonable to list it here since there is a long history of exclusion of women from government and similar roles, so we can consider that we have nonetheless crossed a gender barrier worth noting. But completely novel areas, I'm less comfortable with enumerating them here, since it mixes unlike things too much and downplays an entirely different category of achievement. What about separating them out?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:33, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just wondering: who exactly is left off the list if women who did it before any men are excluded? RockMagnetist (talk) 22:34, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So far I can think of Tatyana McFadden, Erin Hamlin, and Diana Nyad - so mostly sports records. Tellingly, the NY times piece of Nyad's swim doesn't discuss her gender [1]. If we continue on this path, e.g. novel records set by an American sportswomen, the list could grow quite long - which is why I think such effort would be better expended putting such really notable examples in gender-neutral lists, since these are victories for humanity - not just over gender bias. Moreso than who is excluded (as very few are, indicating that past editors have more or less agreed with my proposed inclusion criteria), would be those that would be added if we re-defined this list as including any firsts or any sort performed by an American woman in any field; it would become a whole new ballgame, since women have done many novel things, as have men. Which is why I think those types of innovators should go in a separate list - and we can start such lists as gender neutral (perhaps add a gender column so people can sort if they want).--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:46, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My feeling is that it would be better to go by what the sources say. If the source says, "first American woman to do X", it seems like an unnecessary burden to then make sure that some man did it first. Overall, though, I like your version of the lead better because it lays out clear inclusion criteria. I suggest modifying it to read:
"This is a list of women's firsts, noting the first time that an American woman or women achieved a given historical feat. Inclusion on the list is reserved for achievements by American women that have significant historical impact."
RockMagnetist (talk) 22:54, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. And if sports are that much of a problem, anyone is welcome to start a list of American sportswomen firsts.__ E L A Q U E A T E 23:02, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If the source says "The first American woman to do X", then in 100% of the cases I've looked at, it means a man did it before. This is simply how language is used c2014. I must say that, unfortunately, when we say "The first man to do X", it doesn't mean a woman did it before OTOH - since "man" is sometimes taken to mean "human" - Neil Armstrong is regularly said to be the first man to walk on the moon, for example. I'm now thinking seriously about creating a List of American men's firsts, but need more examples besides Burt Reynolds posing nude... any ideas? (idea would be to focus on things women had already done, but men had not)--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a tricky list to assemble, and almost certainly OR. I added those refs in Further reading, by the way, to strengthen this list's notability per
NOTESAL. Anyway, are you o.k. with my revised wording? RockMagnetist (talk) 23:30, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply
]
I don't think it would be OR, there are sources... Indeed there are thousands of sources of "Lists of first men to..." But I digress. As for your wording, I don't see why you want to take out the "glass ceiling" bit, which has been in the larger List of women's firsts for a while, and I'm not sure why you want to expand the scope to include women's-firsts-in-history - for example, you maintain the list of women scientists - almost every scientist on that list would have contributed a great deal many "firsts", but such firsts don't show up on these lists because that's what is expected. First woman to win a nobel prize is notable since women had a hard time entering the sciences, but first woman to discover X (when X had never been discovered by anyone before) is a completely different type of notability, and doesn't belong on this gender-segregated list.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:25, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The essence of
NOTESAL is that citations can be found that discuss the list as a list. This list is notable because it has multiple sources that do just that (or sometimes a subset like 19th century American women). For "Lists of first men to..." to be notable, it would need such sources too. If you find them, great. If you have a separate citation for each entry, that's OR. As for the lead, we should follow the sources in Further reading. If they explicitly say that they are only considering firsts that were previously done by men, it should be in the lead (but I haven't found such a statement yet). Similarly, we should be guided by those sources in what we include. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:47, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply
]

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Reference named "womensmemorial.org":

  • From Women in the military by country: "Highlights in the History of Military Women". Women In Military Service For America Memorial. Archived from the original on June 22, 2013. Retrieved June 22, 2013.
  • From History of women in the United States: "Women in Military Service For America Memorial". Womensmemorial.org. July 27, 1950. Retrieved June 29, 2011.

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