Being perceived as white on GitHub increases odds of contributions being accepted

šŸ“š Reading Group
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Thatā€™s not the full story. A lot of people hide their identity on purpose. Sad, but true.

Hereā€™s a 5-year old study that found that women actually had pull requests accepted at a higher rate than men: https://www.lawrencehecht.info/girls-outperform-boys-drool/.

Yes, this is gender, not race, but it actually uses the same methodology for identifying people.

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Thanks for this, Iā€™m not surprised I wonder if thereā€™s one on usernames as I try to make mine on some platforms neutral to get answers that arenā€™t condescending\rude. As issues of bullying and privacy resound around disinformation, data thefts, impersonation and targeted ads (where the end user is unaware how the tracking is happening) I realized the other how much I missed ICQ.

I wished it wasnā€™t the case, but I donā€™t know how that would be fixed at the moment.

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Hi Charles,

you write that you use a gender-neutral username on some platforms to avoid condescending/rude remarks. ā€œCharlesā€ sounds male to me - so are there platforms where you feel discrimated as a man? Or am I missing something?

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Re:

"ā€¦There is a big caveat with these findings. Many of the most successful contributors hide their gender on their GitHub.

Excluding insiders (e.g., project owners), women without a tell-tale username have their pull requests accepted at a higher rate than men.

However, when people can identify their gender, men do better.[ā€¦] bro-culture and misogyny are likely reasons people are hiding their genderā€¦"

I work in medical robotics, prior to that in solar energy and Iā€™ve witnessed a lot of gender and racial bias in both. I stopped working in Telecoms and IT support because of it was well, but the women I worked with often knew

just as much as I did and clients would try to get a second opinion from a male technician or ask me directly (as the manager).

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