The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The outcome of this request for deletion was to  Keep. Quite clear consensus to keep. Operator873 ^connect 20:55, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Sportswomen (edit · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete) · close request

Eptalon has nominated this page for deletion for the reason: This is a category for Women that are active in sports. Per our recent guideline, we no longer classify by gender. The category currently contains 231 pages, and 3 subcategories. I propose to delete this category, without replacement. People in there are usually classified by the kind of sport they do; so this category just adds the info 'look this athlete/sportsperson is a woman.' As the people should already be in a subcategory for the sport they do, we can delete this category altogether. The three subcategories (Female athletes, Female footballers, Female tennis players) are already addressed by another RfD. The same argumentation holds for Category:Sportsmen, though there are far fewer entries. Eptalon (talk) 09:22, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please discuss this request below, but keep in mind that you shouldn't vote on everything and that there may be options other than "keep" or "delete", such as merging.

•  Comment: 'Female footballers' and 'Female tennis players' remain as subcategories (again, we are looking at moving over 50 pages, if the categories get deleted). In the case of the Sportsmen, there's 'Male tennis players, with subcat 'British male tennis players'.--Eptalon (talk) 08:32, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I may have come late to this discussion, but it seems to me just plain silly to categorize sportspeople without distinguishing men from women. The mere fact that almost universally women play sports separately from men is itself adequate reason for separate listing. Added to that is the fact that all sports reports in the media do separate them. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:20, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The fact that sportpeople are often segregated by gender doesn't mean they're really doing anything differently. If they compete separately, it may be enough to categorize them under the team or league they play in. And what sports media do doesn't have to guide what we do here.

  And, of course, anywhere that we have a category for the females, there should be a corresponding one for males.

  And besides that, it's a little insulting to call your fellow Wikipedians' proposals silly. Please be civil. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:10, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  There are the following options:

  • this becomes a parent category, without pages, there are subcategories for each sport, so, Lucette Berlioux (1909-64) ends up in 'Female swimmers' and 'French swimmers', if there are enough, we get a category 'French female swimmers' or 'Female French swimmers'; those that stay in the parent category are where we don't have three of a kind. -> that's more or less the state before the RfD about gendering I closed yesterday (were all agreed we should delete)
  • we delete these categories, and subcats, the sex/gender of a participant becomes apparent from first name or pronouns used in the article, perhaps there are categories (like tornaments only open to female teams).

  What I saw in the Categories I propose for deletion is that there's a lot of overcategorization, see my rationale above. In what way is a female tennis player different from an actress or a female physicist? - the discussion about gendering has been going on for ages. I think we reached a decision? Eptalon (talk) 10:41, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Auntof6 Sportpeople are still separated into men and women categories in many sport events. I think grouping all of them together makes things confusing for those trying to find pages on any one of those categories. I think usefulness to the readers and significance in real world should be considered. Also, I read it a few times but I don't think Mac is being uncivil here. It's just how he views this way of categorization, and I don't see him insulting anyone specific.-- BRP ^ever 11:27, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Auntof6: Mac commented on the actions a user took, not the person themselves, which is entirely compliant with the civility policy ("you should always talk about a person's changes, not the person his or herself"). People are allowed to have strong opinions about actions taken on-wiki. --IWI (talk) 16:14, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I have no idea why we need to delete gendered category in every field. There are clearly distinguishable sport events by gender, and there are women who take part in those events. And I think readers do want to find those people in different categories. Keep.--BRP ^ever 11:03, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
•  Delete I cannot see a reason why categorising by gender would be "unavoidable", in order to meet point no.3 of WP:CATGENDER. Therefore this category should be deleted per that guideline. If it is kept, it should be moved to Category:Female sportspeople. --IWI (talk) 16:14, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
•  Keep Sportspeople has always been something separated by gender. This is probably the area where gender is most defining. Categorising by gender here is absolutely unavoidable – they compete in separate races, get separate awards etc. --Ferien (talk) 16:30, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Ferien: But they are not doing anything that is different from what the males do, so why the need for a separate category? Why is it unavoidable? We can have categories, as Ao6 said, for particular leagues and such. --IWI (talk) 18:03, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  ImprovedWikiImprovment, they don't do anything different, but if we're going to assess these categories based on whether women can do something different from men then there's little to no point in WP:CATGENDER condition #3 because women can do everything men can do. I think the question should more be "Is gender defining in this area?", which was the past unwritten consensus before we had this guideline. It's why many RfDs on female categories ended up in keep before we had the addition to the guideline: it just depended on people's opinions as to whether gender was defining in that area. For most categories, I wasn't really bothered either way but I'm glad we've settled on something that ensures most our categories are uniform.

  However with sportspeople, gender is always relevant. There are separate competitions for men and women, who get separate awards as I've already pointed out. There's also a whole article about w:Women's sports on enwiki, that points out many differences between men and women's sports. In professional sports, female competitors rarely get a livable income. At schools, girls still often don't get to have football and rugby in PE lessons while boys do, which can limit women's participation in these sports. There are also sports like netball and w:ringette where there are more women who do these sports than men. A lot of differences with what they earn, what sports they do etc makes gender a defining factor in sport, therefore I think this category's needed. --Ferien (talk) 21:55, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

•  Comment: I added female professional wrestlers to this category, so now it contains three subcats and a number of articles. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:27, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
•  Keep per Ferien. Lights and freedom (talk) 20:34, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
•  Comment: The following categories were deleted (and the entries merged into the parent; amongst others: 'American male athletes ','British male athletes','British female athletes','Female athletes','American female tennis players','American male tennis players','Australian female tennis players','Australian male tennis players','Czech female tennis players','French female tennis players','German female tennis players','Russian female tennis players'. This was in the course of an RfD just below...--Eptalon (talk) 23:22, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
•  Comment: The other RfD I was refering to is this one--Eptalon (talk) 19:21, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
•  Keep While it is worth noting that current public morality says that gender is an arbitrary concept, we nonetheless still do it in sports. Trans women have been banned from competing in women's sports in multiple major international sporting organisations for the simple reason that they are gaining an unfair advantage by being biological men, all of which says that it is important to separate them. If we get to the stage where there is no such thing as women's sports then we can perhaps change this, but then it is probably worthwhile keeping it for historical reasons. I don't think it is a good idea to remove them. Blissyu2 (talk) 23:27, 26 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
•  Keep per Ferien. AJ (talk) 03:15, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This request is due to close on 09:22, 24 March 2023 (UTC), seven days after it was filed, although it may be closed earlier at the discretion of an administrator.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.