Computer code written by women has a higher approval rating than that written by men, according to a study carried out by US researchers.
But the analysis also showed that if women revealed their gender, their coding contributions were less likely to be accepted.
In what they claim is the “largest study to date on gender bias”, scientists from Cal Poly and North Carolina State University looked at contributions made to Github, a software sharing platform which has more than 12 million users.
They found that 78.6% of pull requests (suggested code changes) made by women were accepted, compared with 74.6% by men.
But the number of accepted pull requests from women fell to 62.5% when they specified that they were female.
“While our big data study does not definitely prove that differences between gendered interactions are caused by bias among individuals, the trends observed in this paper are troubling,” the researchers said.
The technology industry continues to be dominated by men, despite efforts by tech companies to recruit more women. Less than one fifth of employees at both Google and Facebook, two of the world’s largest tech companies, are female.
Some people expressed their frustration at the news on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/697804255571402752
You've probably read about the #Github study – it means we're paid less, viewed suspiciously, but write better code. https://t.co/eF3RyofOWh
— Dawn Xiana Moon (@DawnXianaMoon) February 12, 2016
Fascinating + sad: Women's open source code preferable to men's (but not if you knew their gender): https://t.co/p5DKXGyANo by @annaleen
— Fairygodboss (@fairygodboss) February 12, 2016