Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Women's Role in The Cold War


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   Delete. If anyone would like the contents userfied please just let me or another willing admin know. 7 04:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

American Women's Role in The Cold War

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PROD was removed by IP without comment. PROD rationale stands: "Fails WP:NOTESSAY - there are a lot of places this would be great, Wikipedia is not one of them." The piece also has the scent of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH about it. Overall, it's thoroughly unencyclopedic. The Bushranger One ping only 18:34, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. The Bushranger One ping only 18:35, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 18:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete - There appears to be less than 30 sources (General, book) about the subject of this article, and how much depth they go about the subject differs from source to source. That being said the subject does not appear to meet WP:GNG at this time. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:08, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete While interesting, it does not seem to represent the mainstream view of this period of history. Sourced information on the effects of the Cold War on American society could be added to other articles. BigJim707 (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete This is possibly a viable topic for an article, but the current text is very simplistic and would need to be totally re-written Nick-D (talk) 22:45, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - Certainly there are fairly big OR concerns here. This is a new contributor to WP and it is an earnest effort at covering a serious and probably encyclopedic topic. I'm inclined to suggest that this is a KEEP-AND-FIX situation as an encyclopedic topic, but I'm not 100% sure the topic is covered in the literature. Still, I'd bet it is. I have written a fairly long message to the content creator in the spirit of DON'T BITE THE NEWCOMERS and invited them to participate in the debate here. If they're willing, I'd suggest that stubbing out, userfying the content, and taking it from scratch might be the way to play it — assuming sources can be mustered. Again, I think they can, but I haven't looked. If they don't pop in here and aren't interested in doing this, I have no problems with a deletion as OR without prejudice to future recreation when sources can be properly mustered. Carrite (talk) 06:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It occurs to me that this may be a fork of something that already exists — but I don't know the title to search it. Basically the concept is the "redomestication" of women in the American economy during the 1946 to early 1960s interval. I'm positive there is a vast literature on this aspect of economic history. I just don't know what the phenomenon is formally called or if there is a standing WP piece on it. OR concerns of this piece here still stand, obviously... Carrite (talk) 06:38, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow, there seems to be a huge hole here. Feminism has virtually nil on Women in the workplace, the closest thing I can find is Women's work, which is a fine topic, but has nothing to do with women in the workplace in WWII or their reintegration into domestic life during the post-war period. This is an absolutely enormous gap in WP's coverage. Carrite (talk) 06:46, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * HERE is an OCLC title search for "Women in the Workplace." Not 2200+ book-hits ABOUT women in the workplace, but 2200+ books CALLED "Women in the Workplace"!!! I've got half a mind to spend two weeks on this myself, other than the fact that it's not my area of specialty and my own library is weak here. Unbelievable if there isn't some WP article out there that I'm missing... More evidence that this new content creator is TRYING to do the right thing filling in a gargantuan gap — they just accidentally crashed into the Original Research issue... Carrite (talk) 06:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, thank god, I found Women in the workforce and just set up Women in the workplace as a redirect to that. That's a pretty crappy piece, but at least the topic is identified. Carrite (talk) 07:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - the article in its current form is obviously unsuitable for WP standards (as is the title), but as Carrite's excellent thinking points out, this is a needed and missing topic on Wikipedia (there is a general topic, but no daughter article). So, can we stub this with a list of references so that it's helpful to our readers without being in violation of our policies and guidelines? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:07, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - Thank you for all of the input everyone has on this subject. I appreciate the feedback. For everyone's knowledge, I wanted to provide reasoning for publishing this article. I noticed on Wikipedia the lack of information on this topic and I felt it should have an article. Whether it's mine or not, I don't really mind. I would really prefer to just edit this current article. I tried to provide reliable and academic sources to back up the information I was using. If someone were to add to it, they wouldn't have to start from a blank slate. Originally, this was written as a project for an AP World History class. Instead of full out deleting it, I feel that adjustments should just be made in order to keep the information on Wikipedia. Regarding the complaints on the article itself (Original Research, Synthesizing research, and writing in an essay format), I wasn't trying to break the Wikipedia guidelines, and as I stated before, I would rather someone alter it into the correct form instead of just contributing opinions and not solutions. I tried to edit the article so that it wasn't in the form of an essay, but as I sifted through the debate, it doesn't seem to have made a difference (if my revised article was read before the comments were posted). I've never written such a formal "article" or writing of such form. Furthermore, I'm not sure how someone could justify the deletions. I really wanted people to actually point out the flaws instead of just saying delete it. I'm sure it wasn't professional-sounding because I'm only a sophomore in high school. But I appreciate the amount of monitoring on this website. The experience was interesting and it proves how strict and accurate the information is. -Caroline. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cesweaver96 (talk • contribs) 15:10, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hey Caroline, thanks for dropping in. You've indeed identified a massive gap in Wikipedia's coverage. I've been thinking quite a lot about this matter this morning. I think the answer might be something like this: The so-called "encyclopedic topic" should probably be Women in the American workforce, which would be an occupational history of women in the American economy from colonial times to the present day; or perhaps Women in the 20th Century American workforce, which would have the benefit of being more focused. Within that there would be a periodization making use of subsections: WWII (1941-1945) being one and the "Cold War Period" as you, I think correctly, phrase it (1946-1964, give or take). Others will note this is essentially the period of what is called the "Baby Boom" — it's actually two manifestations of the same phenomenon, in which the women who entered the workforce during wartime were reintegrated (sometimes against their will) into "domesticity" — traditional "women's work" and "homemaking." Fans of old cinema probably are well versed on this theme, it was a broad cultural offensive. (more)


 * There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there is a massive academic literature on these things. Your prose are not bad and you've done a good job identifying the basic characteristics of the time frame and trying to source things out. The problem is that the period standing alone, outside of coverage of both the wartime period before it and the "Women's Lib" (to borrow the phrase of the day) years which followed makes the material sound like something of a political essay. Framed in context, and maybe toned down here and there and sourced out a little better, I think things are pretty much on target. But the problem is now that the piece has been sucked into the AfD storm drain and it's sort of hard to get things from here to there. There is a process called "userfication," in which the closing administrator will port your article over to a somewhat hidden corner of your "user page" so that you won't lose your work. I think that maybe that's the best option from where we sit. Then we can establish a new page with an easily "defendable" title — Women in the American workforce, Women in the 20th Century American workforce, etc. — and we can reintegrate your work there, making sure it's in accord with NEUTRAL POINT OF VIEW (do make sure to read and really understand the material found at that link!) Anyway, don't ever apologize for your age (there are plenty of solid contributors at WP and doubtlessly some administrators not yet in college), nor do you need to apologize for the quality of your work or your effort. Welcome to Wikipedia and don't be afraid to drop me a line at the TALK link which follows my signature if you'd like to discuss this strategy in more detail. Carrite (talk) 17:45, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete and userfy and recreate basic ideas in a defendable encyclopedic context in accord with NPOV. I sold myself on this option (above) anyway. Carrite (talk) 18:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.