New Study Shows Women are Better Coders -- So Why Do They Have to Hide Their Gender to Get Respect?

A new study recently published in the preprint journal PeerJ showed that the work of female coders is accepted more than the work of men. But once their gender is identified, everything changes.

Gender bias

The study showed that women coders are more competent than male coders. The study stated 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." Although women represented a smaller percentage of coders using a platform called GitHub, women had a 79 percent approval rate of accepted proposed changes, compared with about 75 percent for men.

Women also dominated over men in every single coding language. The overall conclusion from the study was that women were more competent when it comes to coding. But, when female gender was identifiable from their user profile, acceptance rate for women coders dropped to 62 percent.

Pay gap

Another area of gender bias among women coders is in pay. According to a 2005 study in the Economics of Education Review journal, women in the fields of math and science are paid only 88 percent of what their male counterparts earn.

The findings of the research point to sexism in the field of coding for women.

Read more by visiting www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/women-coders-are-more-respected-when-peers-dont-know-theyre-women_us_56cc6b32e4b0928f5a6d2f65?ir=Women&section=us_women&utm_hp_ref=women