No both genders are definitely active in creating digital commons, which I define as the creation of knowledge (including actionable knowledge with a direct impact on life) that is collective constructed and made universally available. Some areas are male-dominated, but with very strong presence of women (say the Arduino circuit board design community), but others have a majority of women.

Can you say what you mean by the digital commons?

thanks Susan. Have you considered how digital commons, substantially and sometimes mostly driven by women, will play a role?

Thanks Susan, your remarks are appreciated but I’m sure it was not David’s intention to obscure the contributions of women and feminists to the defense and revival of the commons. David works very closely with Silke Helfrich, who has been very active in the alterglobalisation movement and WSF for years, and I’m sure she’s sensitive to that side of the history. Nevertheless, I heard her own judgment that something new is happening around the commons, and that it is moving from a peripheral concern, to being part of the core policy paradigm of the WSF, and at the very least, they are working on that in time for the Rio+20 events. This is possible because of all those that prepared the terrain and as you say, that history should not be forgotten. By the way, historical references would be very useful to update the p2p foundation wiki on that aspect (http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Commons). As for the privatisation of the commons by females, Margaret Thatcher comes to mind, I’m pretty sure that in a world where the class of capital would be more feminized, it would be they doing the privatisation.

As far as I’m aware Susan, OWS is barely a year old … I would be surprised if any convergence could have happened before. Just for the record, I know for sure from conversations David has read at least Mies, Shiva, Barlow and Ariel Saleh, and his own involvement is at least two decades old) who indeed talked about the commons before the advent of ows … and you will also find multiple references to them in the p2p wiki, but it is undoubtedly time to look up the work of Susan Hawthorne about which I admit I was not aware, but would be very happy to learn about. While feminists have undoubtedly played a very important role in the re-emmergence of the commons, they are not the only social force around. The commons is not the property of any single social force. There is also a huge difference between the expansion of an idea, and its effective take-up by a mass social movement with more than local appeal, and as a central core of its political stance (we’re not there yet with ows, but the world social forum is pretty close) and the emergence of the digital commons also brings something new to the table. Let not history blind us to the strong re-emergence of the commons right now.