[rmc]

Women are the majority

This is why I use the term "marginalized groups" rather than "minority". Black people were a majority in apartheid South Africa. But they were marginalized.

[aestra]

The term minority has a specific meaning in sociology not the same that it means in statistics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_(sociology)

Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, the term refers to a category that is differentiated and defined by the social majority, that is, those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society. The differentiation can be based on one or more observable human characteristics, including, for example, ethnicity, race, gender, wealth, health or sexual orientation. Usage of the term is applied to various situations and civilizations within history, despite its popular mis-association with a numerical, statistical minority.

Blacks were still the minority in apartheid South Africa, just not the statistical minority.

[rmc]

Yep.

But in spaces like there, where people are unlikely to know things like that, it can be helpful to use terms like "margalized group" or "oppressed group", in order to stop a pedantic geek ( :) ) getting into a dictionary definition argument.

[tehwalrus]

the context I'm most familiar with is representation (in a profession, in parliament, etc) so we talk positively about making those places more diverse, rather than pointing out the systemic marginalisation (which, for the case of sexism/etc in those contexts, is often subconscious - unlike apartheid.)