According to a recent study, open source code written by women on the popular software repository is more often approved than code written by men. However, while this may seem like a victory for women in tech everywhere, there is a notable caveat to these findings: this is only the case when the women coder’s gender is a secret. Which, in so many words, is pretty disappointing. The data is fairly damning in the study. After analyzing three million submissions on GitHub, researchers found that women coders enjoyed a 78.6 percent approval rating, while men coders only saw a 74.6 percent approval rating. Unfortunately, when women coders disclosed their gender on their profile, the approval rating fell all the way to 62.5 percent. However, the gender blind numbers are even more striking when you realize that women make up no more than one tenth of the entire coder population on GitHub. Now, before you grab your torches and pitchforks in hopes of righting these incredible wrong, it’s important to note that this study is in the early stages of legitimacy. The research has not been peer reviewed and is subsequently not a 100 percent legitimate source of information on the matter. But if the data is solid and peer-reviewed without criticism, it will remain another straw on the gender cap camel’s back that needs to be removed.
