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A study of pull requests made by nearly 1.4 million users of Github has found that code changes made by women were more likely to get accepted, unless their gender was easily identifiable. The study is awaiting peer review, so keep that in mind:
The researchers, from the computer science departments at Caly Poly and North Carolina State University, looked at around four million people who logged on to Github on a single day - 1 April 2015. Github is an enormous developer community which does not request gender information from its 12 million users. However the team was able to identify whether roughly 1.4m were male or female - either because it was clear from the users' profiles or because their email addresses could be matched with the Google+ social network. The researchers accepted that this was a privacy risk but said they did not intend to publish the raw data.
The team found that 78.6% of pull requests made by women were accepted compared with 74.6% of those by men. The researchers considered various factors, such as whether women were more likely to be responding to known issues, whether their contributions were shorter in length and so easier to appraise, and which programming language they were using, but they could not find a correlation.
However among users who were not well known within the community, those whose profiles made clear that they were women had a much lower acceptance rate than those whose gender was not obvious. "For outsiders, we see evidence for gender bias: women's acceptance rates are 71.8% when they use gender neutral profiles, but drop to 62.5% when their gender is identifiable. There is a similar drop for men, but the effect is not as strong," the paper noted.
"Women have a higher acceptance rate of pull requests overall, but when they're outsiders and their gender is identifiable, they have a lower acceptance rate than men. Our results suggest that although women on Github may be more competent overall, bias against them exists nonetheless," the researchers concluded.
[Continues...]
The excellent Slate Star Codex has analysed this data.
I would highly recommend reading Scott Alexander's full analysis, but here's his summation...
So, let’s review. A non-peer-reviewed paper shows that women get more requests accepted than men. In one subgroup, unblinding gender gives women a bigger advantage; in another subgroup, unblinding gender gives men a bigger advantage. When gender is unblinded, both men and women do worse; it’s unclear if there are statistically significant differences in this regard.Only one of the study’s subgroups showed lower acceptance for women than men, and the size of the difference was 63% vs. 64%, which may or may not be statistically significant. This may or may not be related to the fact, demonstrated in the study, that women propose bigger and less useful changes on average; no attempt was made to control for this. This tiny amount of discrimination against women seems to be mostly from other women, not from men.
The media uses this to conclude that “a vile male hive mind is running an assault mission against women in tech.”
Every time I say I’m nervous about the institutionalized social justice movement, people tell me that I’m crazy, that I’m just sexist and privileged, and that feminism is merely the belief that women are people so any discomfort with it is totally beyond the pale. I would nevertheless like to re-emphasize my concerns at this point.
(Score: 2, Troll) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @08:27AM
If a BBC article reporting on a study gets you that triggered then you may have a problem.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @08:44AM
Actually, the people doing the "study" have the problem. People need to own their problems. There is no Github problem cited here. Nor is it a guy problem. I don't think it is a woman problem either. The problem belongs to those people who expect this thing called "gender equality". Those people have multiple problems. "Women have a higher acceptance rate of pull requests overall," Do you see what they've done there? They have judged males and females, and deem women to be superior to males. There is no "gender equality" here, they are struggling to place women above men.
Github has a problem. That problem is, that they have permitted an outside interest to take over Github, and said outside interest is far more concerned with "feminism" than it is concerned with coding.
And, we, the general public, as well as all individuals using Github, have a different problem, in that the quality of Github will deteriorate.
If my primary concern with Github were that my work was accepted, then I would do what is necessary to get my work accepted. If I felt that Github were biased against my work because I am Chinese, or Korean, or Tutsi, or Polish, or whatever, I would use some neutral name that did not identify me as such. Many women have done the same.
But - oh wait! The authors of this article purport to know which submitters are male, and which female? How do they KNOW?!?!?! Have they arbitrarily assigned all the best code on Github to female authors, and all the trash to males?
Peer reviewed, right? I want to know how they controlled for gender in their "study".
Biased individuals almost never do unbiased studies, and they cannot come up with unbiased results.
Never trust the results of any study done by Social Justice Warriors.
I, for one, resent very much being socially engineered.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @08:52AM
Even though you resent being socially engineered, you were able to write a mature response to the article. That's more than we can say about commenters screaming "flamebait!!!!111" on a story being reported by BBC, Ars, The Register, CNN, The Guardian, CBS, MIT Technology Review, and others.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @09:29AM
Well, actually, I do regard it as flamebait. Women are being told - they are being conditioned - to see rather normal gender interactions as "oppression".
Even when we don't know each other's genders, religions, racial makeup, there is a competitive atmosphere in a lot of our relations. You see it all over the internet - github, twitter, facebook, you name it. Hell, you see it right here on Soylent. It's obvious as hell in academia - colleges try to promote an image of being elite. MIT is better than any other college in some fields - but are they really, or is that just the image they have managed to promote?
Competitiveness. We all want to be "the best", after all.
Traditionally, women didn't waste a lot of time competing with men. Today, they have begun to compete. If they are good, they will prove themselvs. If they aren't so good, then they won't prove themselves, will they?
It is completely unreasonable to believe that men are going to "change" for women. How many damned fool women have married worthless bums, believing that the bum would change?
Let's be reasonable. I'm an asshole, and I'm not going to change just because some little piece of fluff says I should be "nicer". It didn't happen ten thousand years ago, it didn't happen a generation ago, and it's not happening today. I'm an asshole - deal with it, or GTFO - don't expect an apology.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @09:36AM
screaming "flamebait!!!!111" on a story being reported by BBC, Ars, The Register, CNN, The Guardian, CBS, MIT Technology Review, and others.
Wow, media outlets that are quickly becoming irrelevant because of dying business models are reporting on a story that is guaranteed to get them a lot of clicks. Who'd have thunk?!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @09:54AM
It's still not flamebait because of the content, which is a widely-reported study. It's entirely possible to discuss the validity of the study without flaming.
Let's say the study survives peer review and gets reported on again, or the results are replicated by other researchers. Will you still consider it clickbait or flamebait?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:25AM
yes. it is what it is. and its brainwashing propaganda. the answer is yes. and im with the people above, when they redo the study please dont post it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:43AM
I did my own study. I found that systemd really is an excellent piece of software, but only because Lennart Poettering has a vagina *and* testicles! Another test I did which you might find enlightening... I also did a DNA test on him and found out not only is he half man half woman he's half black, half mexican, half native american, half muslim, half calf, half vente and half a sack of shit! His code makes even the most anal retentive Social Justice Warrior ponder 24/7/365 about what they could possibly bitch about.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday February 15 2016, @11:16AM
The problem is that fools start citing these studies as a sort of proof even if the quality of the research is shoddy (as you can expect from the social sciences), it hasn't been peer-reviewed, and it hasn't been replicated.
I don't think it's flamebait, but I also don't think it's very smart for idiotic reporters to instantly cite studies simply because they exist and are new, no matter what conclusions they reach. It's especially bad in situations where they use the studies to justify changes to government policy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @11:21AM
This from my educated son - the one who really understands math, science, statistical analysis, and much more:
It is pretty obvious that the authors set out to show social injustice, and after coming up empty five times they found a point they might argue. At best it's a stretch to write another grant proposal.
Sociology and its retrospective surveys are mostly garbage in my opinion. With any luck the peer that reviews this will look at it thoroughly and critically and challenge it on numerous counts.
I fucking hate sociology. It isn't a science. It is no more than a collection of interesting "trends" and viewpoints. The foundations of sound science inherently differ from sociology.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Nelson on Monday February 15 2016, @10:39PM
Point of question: Did they set out to show social injustice or did they set out to try and quantify some aspect of it? How do you know what their intent was or is this simply inferred by their past?
The reactions here, merely to the study are kind of shocking. We could simply ignore it if it's invalid or wait for it to be peer reviewed or something. Seems a lot of folks feel pretty insecure at the very suggestion that there are actual gender issues in tech; which is funny because its grossly obvious that there are some differences.
What's his argument against the actual numbers they've published? Why aren't they the same or are they within error?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:49AM
The woman who commissioned this "study" has a history of Social Justice activism. When a person has a history of political and/or social activism, it may safely be presumed that person has an agenda when he/she commissions a "study" in that area of interest.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Nelson on Tuesday February 16 2016, @05:35PM
Who "commissioned" it?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 16 2016, @06:15PM
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nmsanchez [linkedin.com]
Wanstrath "enabled" the ditzy activist, so they share equal blame.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Monday February 15 2016, @02:33PM
I resent this article as well.
Even assuming they did get the genders right, there is a huge disconnect between what the study measured and what it is supposed to mean. I don't see them saying what the connection is... A pull request could have nothing more than updated comments. If a woman wants to spend her days rewriting comments, hell I'll accept the pull request... So how does that mean women write 'better' code? It could just mean they write better comments... Also if the pull request is short and easy to look over it might get accepted right away, if the pull request is huge it might get rejected and told to come back in pieces that are easier to review... So it such a case maybe women tend to write smaller or more concise pull requests. Does that mean they are better? I don't know...
Also how can SJWs support this, I thought their latest shtick was that there is no gender binary...
Well let's say we can somehow take this stupid study at face value (*laughs to self*), does this mean we should now pay female engineers more? (At this point I cant contain the laughter so I need to stop).
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Monday February 15 2016, @09:18AM
You haven't yet seem me triggered, but I have to agree that this is just more salve for the Sad Puppies. Poor bastards. If better coders identify as female, they are better coders. If better coders do not identify as female, they still are better coders. If fail to see a problem, unless it is that we need some kind of discriminatory "affirmative action" program for the poor sad puppies that cannot compete on merits, because after hundreds of years of white privilege, they do not actually know how to excel in a truly competitive environment. I am all in favor of adding "single white loser male" to the affirmative action categories. Maybe even "heterosexual, Christian White Male", but that seems to be pushing it a bit, because _those bastards_ will not succeed even if we give them a leg up to replace that they have historically cut from beneath others.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @10:21AM
ROFLMAO - that is just to damned funny. Sounds to me like you don't have a leg to stand on.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.