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A new tag: has been created and applied to several questions. The tag wiki excerpt says:

Questions specifically about gender issues in higher education and those involved in academic activities.

It originally said:

Questions specifically about women's issues in higher education and those involved in academic activities.

We already have a tag that covers the above. It is applied to 16 questions. I do not understand the rationale for a tag.

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    @EnthusiasticStudent Please post an answer explaining the rationale for the tag. Poll-style comment votes on issues like this are not very helpful. Since you created the tag, I am encouraging you to post an answer explaining why you created the tag and why you think it is necessary.
    – ff524
    Mar 9, 2015 at 15:27

1 Answer 1

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I strongly believe that a tag is both duplicative of and counter-productive. My two main reasons for feeling this way are:

  1. Many of the questions, although phrased in terms of women, are really about gender issues in society and about the pervasive climate of sexism that most of us live within. In other words, it's not a "women's issue," it's a gender issue, and the actors who make it an issue are not just women.
  2. Many of the issues raised apply also more generally to anybody who does not cleanly fit onto the standard gender binary.
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    Well said, that's exactly what bothered me about this tag.
    – ff524
    Mar 9, 2015 at 17:06
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    Given the clear agreement on this, I've merged women into gender (i.e. eliminated women)
    – ff524
    Mar 9, 2015 at 18:20
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    @ff524 Could you make it a synonym instead?
    – Federico Poloni
    Mar 19, 2015 at 18:32
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    @FedericoPoloni Why?
    – ff524
    Mar 19, 2015 at 18:33
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    @ff524 Because I can easily imagine users looking for such a tag when tagging or searching questions, and recreating it again. What we want is that questions that people may wish to tag "women" should be tagged "gender" instead. That's exactly the semantic of a tag synonym, in my opinion.
    – Federico Poloni
    Mar 19, 2015 at 18:35
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    @FedericoPoloni Oh, you meant "in addition" not "instead" (I was reading your request very literally). OK, 'men' 'women' and 'transgender' are now synonyms of 'gender'
    – ff524
    Mar 19, 2015 at 18:37
  • Agree with it (usually) being a gender issue. After all, discrimination -- as a different treatment -- requires a comparison standard. And here I would question whether the other group really has it that well. These issues are usually quite complex and frequently there's a lot of over-generalization. Discrimination also goes both ways, and yes, there are profs who are sexist against men. Separating both women's and men's issues, while usually dealing with the same underlying problems, would fragment the issue and cause diversion and strife. These are human (gender) issues.
    – Daniel Wessel
    Mar 20, 2015 at 12:21
  • @ff524 It was a good idea to create those three tag synonyms. Thank you.
    – enthu
    Mar 20, 2015 at 13:08
  • @FedericoPoloni Thank you for suggesting to create tag synonyms.
    – enthu
    Mar 20, 2015 at 13:09

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