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One of the main issues with this stack environment in my opinion is the gender bias. I have only been active for about a month but I see that answers are often biased towards men.

Often there is a question about training, lifting, strength... and the answer most generally accepted would not be optimal for women at all (I have looked at some of my answers and see them biased too).

I have trained average men, average women, men athletes, women athletes, the whole gamut... Women and men are on totally different planets. Really the only union is the extreme powerlifter that wants pure strength - and maybe .01% of all women are looking for this.

So I ask how does the site tailor more towards getting good information for women's workout routines, differences in chemical make-up, differences in recovery and adaptation, so that the other 50% of the population can get good advice too?

Maybe having a women's set of tags (isn't that biased unless we have men's tags?)?

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The way I look at this is what is the asker of the question seeking. I suspect a majority of our users on this site are male (based on language, user names, and such), and that a small percentage of the users here are female.

I don't agree that having a tags for "men" and "women" is necessary especially when one group is the majority. If a question is inherently dependent on physiological features, it might be worth adding the tag, but that depends on the content of what the person is asking.

Stack Exchange should be used for specific questions that should generate specific answers. If some attribute needs to be identified given that it is an essential part of the question, it should be stated so. It is perfectly fine to highlight different areas or exceptions to a topic for awareness, and competing answers that have good information will be upvoted accordingly. Ultimately, though, the accepted answer is something the asker will choose based on what is the most useful answer to that person's problem.

Answers can always be edited, and comments can be posted to ask for clarification. No one should feel like there is any barrier from participating on this site.

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  • Well I think what you are describing is a barrier for participating. If the voted up answers are voted on by men and a woman is scouring for information and doesn't like that her content isn't here then she will not participate. What you are saying is the exact reason why I asked the question. Also if we are putting the "specific" notation in then I think a lot of questions need to be cleaned up to note male or female. Because I see a lot of general questions getting general answers.
    – DMoore
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 18:55
  • Your answer is funny given that it seems that we are trying to close out every question as duplicate to this - fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/13502/… - that has anything to do with toning any part of their body. So in practice what you are saying is not happening on this site at all hence my question. It seems that the current moderators are looking for very general questions and they are answered very generally and things are being closed out to these general questions. Hence how would a woman get info since they are "generally" in the minority.
    – DMoore
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 17:32
  • @DMoore Close votes can be started by high-rep users, not necessarily moderators. I think that's the case with the recent spate of toning dupes.
    – Dave Liepmann
    Commented Aug 18, 2013 at 1:12
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    @DMoore - And that was also addressed in chat as well, about the hammering on dupes recently. I agree with Matt Chan, in that the questions themselves lend themselves to answers that favor either one gender or another. In the basic, however, there really isn't a lot of difference between male/female, it's when you start getting towards the minutiae that it matters.
    – JohnP Mod
    Commented Aug 19, 2013 at 21:52
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The nature of the questions on this site is that the answers are generally very specific to the asker. Not just gender specific, but level-of-fitness specific, goal-specific, injury-specific, etc. Gender is just another piece of information that can help to craft a good answer for the asker.

Where an answer to a more general question has gender differences, it is good to point that out.

But truly general questions are rare here because "you should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face".

How does the site tailor more towards getting good information for women's workout routines?

I think the only way to do this is by getting more questions asking for women's workout routines, or giving really good answers to the few that exist.

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  • I think a lot of the questions are posed as gender neutral. Take the question asking how to get tone. There are different strategies for women and men. I am betting that most answers will gear things towards men. And I am betting that people will vote for answers that best tailor towards men.
    – DMoore
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 18:51
  • The question was "how do I get toned", and that asker's name is Jake. One of the answers does mention a difference in body fat targets for men vs women, though.
    – user4644
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 18:53
  • So if a person named "user324223" asks how do I get toned then it won't get deleted as being a duplicate?
    – DMoore
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 18:56
  • My guess is that it would likely be placed on hold, but if the user explains that the original question doesn't address their question because they are asking from a female's point of view, it would get re-opened after they add that additional bit of information to the question.
    – user4644
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 18:59
  • So we can keep going around in circles here... what if userxxxx asked the question not Jake. We would assume that user was a guy and give an answer for a guy and it would be generally accepted by the site. We are talking about 20% of the questions that have answers designed for men but there is no notation anywhere that it is for men. If someone asks "How would one get more toned arms?" - which gender does that count as? The answers are different!
    – DMoore
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 17:36
  • That is in error, then. We if the answer depends on the gender, we should ask what gender userX is, or give both alternatives. The general question "how does one get more toned arms" would need to be made more specific so that it addresses an actual problem the asker faces, which may require identification of gender.
    – user4644
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 21:02
  • Also, who is assuming userX is a guy?
    – user4644
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 21:03
  • Well that is why I asked the question - you aren't wrong on what you are saying it just isn't happening. I can give you 20 examples of questions where it is a general question and the most accepted answers only address men. There is no way that all of these answers are correct or as good for women.
    – DMoore
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 22:35
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    Fix them and you'll get upvotes.
    – user4644
    Commented Aug 16, 2013 at 15:44

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