GitHub 上 Pull Request 的男女歧視問題

衛報報導了從 GitHub 上分析 pull request 的性別分析研究:「Women considered better coders – but only if they hide their gender」,原始論文出自「Gender bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men」。

研究的結果說明女性的 pull request 接受機率比男性高,但如果貢獻者可被確認是女性的話則會反過來,也就是說男女歧視問題是可被觀察到的:

Surprisingly, our results show that women's contributions tend to be accepted more often than men's. However, when a woman's gender is identifiable, they are rejected more often. Our results suggest that although women on GitHub may be more competent overall, bias against them exists nonetheless.

由於性別資訊不是必填項目,論文裡面也有提到透過 social network 的資料比對,以及其他方式去推測。這個研究成果看起來應該會產生不少討論...