Pull Requests Are Accepted At About The Same Rate, Regardless of Gender (techinasia.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Remember that story about how women "get pull requests accepted more (except when you know they're women)." The study actually showed that men also had their code accepted more often when their gender wasn't known, according to Tech In Asia -- and more importantly, the lower acceptance rates (for both men and women) applied mostly to code submitters from outside the GitHub community. "Among insiders, there's no evidence of discrimination against women. In fact, the reverse is true: women who are on the inside and whose genders are easy to discern get more of their code approved, and to a statistically significant degree."

Eight months after the story ran, the BBC finally re-wrote their original headline ("Women write better code, study suggests") and added the crucial detail that acceptance rates for women fell "if they were not regulars on the service and were identified by their gender."

Comments

Relationship

[Anonymous Coward]

Since both men and women have their code accepted at higher rates when you know their gender, I wonder if there is a relationship between knowing more about a person and accepting their code. Does knowing someone better mean you are more accepting of their work? If Beth is a working mother of 5 and you know this, does that knowledge make you more or less likely to approve of her code opposed to only knowing that someone made a merge request?

Re:Relationship

[dgatwood]

Actually, it's more like an uncanny valley. The first part was that for people outside the community (where you don't really know much about them), if you know nothing about the submitter, you're more likely to accept the code than if you know just a little bit about the submitter. But if you actually know them IRL, you're more likely to accept their code.

Re:Relationship

[AmiMoJo]

And that is exactly what you would expect. People tend to be open minded when they don't know anything about a person. Once they know enough to categorize them, all the biases creep in. Then as they get to know them, they start to see them as individuals again.

it is STILL discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a huge misunderstanding of discrimination:

"no evidence of discrimination against women. In fact, the reverse is true: women who are on the inside and whose genders are easy to discern get more of their code approved, and to a statistically significant degree"

It is still unjust to give them preferential treatment. This is a common misconception from the early days of chivalry: putting a woman on a pedestal just because she is a woman is still discriminating against her.

If there were no discrimination at all, there would be no gender bias. The fact that the author does not understand this is an example of ... wait for it ... institutional gender discrimination.

Re:it is STILL discrimination

[amiga3D]

I'm against discrimination in my organization. Not for some thing about right and wrong but simply because I feel the best should rise to the top. Gender be damned. It doesn't make sense to decide anything on the gender or sexual preference or color or religion or much of anything else about the person who does the work except for the quality of their work. Most people where I work feel this way too. We have very few women (it's aircraft repair and modification) but those we have are mostly excellent at their jobs and respected by their male coworkers. They constantly try to hire more women but I've seen women show up for an interview, take one look at the work environment, and just walk out. Somehow though, it's alway spun that it's our fault women don't work here.