The women's forum is good. It's a resource for useful information, venting, support chatting about Taiwan/other stuff and generally hanging out. People post there that don't post on the main board.
None of the comments below criticise any work that any of you do for flob. Please take them in the constructive spirit that they meant in.
kage wrote:
almas john wrote:
Any ideas why there aren't more women posting on forumosa?
surely you've been around long enough to know the answer to that!?
You* can choose a day at random and find at least half a dozen seriously nasty, sexist truly female-repelling comments, by 'mainstream' posters. If the modmins ever figure out a way to deal with that then women would be more likely to hit the women's forum, because there would be more on the site at large, so they'd be in more of a position to know about it.
Everyone has got to admit, the site's 'humour' is slightly raw for a lot of non-native English speakers to deal with. Even native speakers don't want to engage with the 'Oohh, boobies!' mentality a lot of the time. Women respect your freedom of speech, they just aren't interested in participating.
You could co-opt sympathetic, capable and time-committed females as Mods, and ask them to expand the readership? Groom the newbs?
Make the HH's more accesssible so that women come? I would guess that many women don't go because they don't really want to spend their free time hanging out in furriner bars with old married guys or newb teachers: think of ways to promote diversity. Get people to expand the 'real life' parts of flob in the same way as many flobbers have promoted hiking, etc. It's sometimes counter-productive to have one 'flob community', because people who aren't interested just stay away; we should think of it as a network, rather than a group. Flob has a lot of diversity, but maybe this isn't reflected in things like 'Family Xmas Lunch' or 'hiking' or 'pet rescue' (not criticising those activities which have grown up without any 'push', just that other events or groups that might attract women may need more artificial help to get going). Pretty much none of my FFs would have
dreamed of presenting for any of that, but would still have been good folk to have on board. I recognise that it is very difficult to change that, organically, though.
It also looks a bit shite (burgundy, for Chrissakes; if that ain't an 'old man' colour, I don't know what is), with a line of daft gurlies along the bottom, all the trekkie-boy avatars, etc. I'm NOT suggesting you should 'Hello Kittify' it, but perhaps make it more visually attractive?
There isn't much specific info here that's organised in any meaningful way. The problem with the women's site is that most of the people who post on it have actually left Taiwan, now. if people ask a question, there's not much chance of getting a useful answer. You have to reach a sort of tipping point/momentum with these things; the wider site 'works' because it has lots of traffic, so more people come, so more people help out, so...
It's a little difficult to get that momentum and buzz going, I guess. I also think there are a LOT fewer overseas' women in Taiwan, these days, of the English speaking variety, for the same reasons that a lot of guys are leaving or staying away. The levelling off of the ESL teaching industry, the lack of investment in learning Chinese here paired with huge investment in this in China, fewer companies sending people to Taiwan, etc.
kage, you have to log on to see it because you need to prove that you is a wimmin.
*I mean you could, if you wanted to, not I have to defend my statement by actually doing it myself.
