Just in:
Universal Language for Healthcare: General Authority Embraces Global Coding System // No running of govt from jail, says Delhi Lt Governor // HSBC Streamlines Gold Investment for Hong Kong Residents with Tokenized Product // Renewables Surge Sets Record, But Global Equity Lags // Emirates Post Speeds Up Deliveries for GCC with Special Day // Arvind Kejriwal Was Used By BJP In 2011 Movement To Take On The Congress // Konica Minolta is named ASEAN 2023 Market Leader in Colour Light and Mid Digital Production Printers // In Lok Sabha Polls In Punjab, AAP Is Advantageously Placed As Against Its Three Rivals // Hullabaloo About Electoral Bonds May End Up As A Whimper Pre And Post Poll // Lisboeta Macau’s world first LINE FRIENDS PRESENTS CASA DE AMIGO and BROWN & FRIENDS CAFE & BISTRO has officially opened // Andertoons by Mark Anderson for Thu, 28 Mar 2024 // Near Miss at Kolkata Airport: IndiGo Plane Makes Contact with Stationary Air India Express // Arvind Kejriwal Gets International Heft Against The Deshi Vishwaguru // AI Boost for Galaxy Devices: Samsung Expands One UI 6.1 Update // Sunshine’s Debut Features Leave Tech World Scratching Its Head // Court Sides with Coinbase on Wallet Service, But Staking Program Remains in Limbo // Sharpening the Focus: Sharjah Health Department Refines Evaluation Criteria for “Healthy Schools Programme” // Meta Earth Official Website Launch: The Pioneer Explorer in the Modular Public Blockchain Domain // US reiterates concern over Kejriwal arrest, Cong accounts // Party Nominees Refusing To Contest: Major Perception Threat For BJP //
HomeTAP ResearchStudy finds gender bias in open-source programming

Study finds gender bias in open-source programming

1493647505 1 studyfindsge

Credit: North Carolina State University

A study comparing acceptance rates of contributions from men and women in an open-source software community finds that, overall, women’s contributions tend to be accepted more often than men’s – but when a woman’s gender is identifiable, they are rejected more often.


“There are a number of questions and concerns related to gender bias in computer programming, but this project was focused on one specific research question: To what extent does gender bias exist when pull requests are judged on GitHub?” says Emerson Murphy-Hill, corresponding author of a paper on the study and an associate professor of computer science at North Carolina State University.

ADVERTISEMENT

GitHub is an online programming community that fosters collaboration on projects. When people identify ways to improve code on a given project, they submit a “pull request.” Those pull requests are then approved or denied by “insiders,” the programmers who are responsible for overseeing the project.

For this study, researchers looked at more than 3 million pull requests from approximately 330,000 GitHub users, of whom about 21,000 were .

The researchers found that 78.7 percent of women’s pull requests were accepted, compared to 74.6 percent for men.

However, when looking at pull requests by people who were not insiders on the relevant project, the results got more complicated.

Programmers who could easily be identified as women based on their names or profile pictures had lower pull request acceptance rates (58 percent) than users who could be identified as men (61 percent). But woman programmers who had gender neutral profiles had higher acceptance rates (70 percent) than any other group, including men with gender neutral profiles (65 percent).

“Our results indicate that gender bias does exist in open-source programming,” Murphy-Hill says. “The study also tells us that, in general, women on GitHub are strong programmers. We don’t think that’s because affects one’s programming skills, but likely stems from strong self-selection among women who submit pull requests on the site.

“We also want to note that this paper builds on a previous, un-peer-reviewed version of the paper, which garnered a lot of input that improved the research,” Murphy-Hill says.

The paper, “Gender Differences and Bias in Open Source: Pull Request Acceptance of Women Versus Men,” is published in the open-access journal PeerJ Computer Science. The paper was co-authored by Josh Terrell, a former undergraduate at Cal Poly; Andrew Kofink, a former undergraduate at NC State; Justin Middleton, a Ph.D. student at NC State; Clarissa Rainear, an undergraduate at NC State; Chris Parnin, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State; and Jon Stallings, an assistant professor of statistics at NC State. The work was done with support from the National Science Foundation under grant number 1252995.


Explore further:
Women accepted as better coders as long as no gender link

More information:
Josh Terrell et al, Gender differences and bias in open source: pull request acceptance of women versus men, PeerJ Computer Science (2017). DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.111

Source link

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT
Just in:
The World’s First & Wettest Party: “S2O Hong Kong Songkran Music Festival” proudly returns Get an immersive water and music experience on 8-9 June during Dragon Boat Festival long weekend at Central Harbourfront Event Space! // Andertoons by Mark Anderson for Thu, 28 Mar 2024 // Emirates Post Speeds Up Deliveries for GCC with Special Day // HSBC Streamlines Gold Investment for Hong Kong Residents with Tokenized Product // Arvind Kejriwal Was Used By BJP In 2011 Movement To Take On The Congress // Party Nominees Refusing To Contest: Major Perception Threat For BJP // German Job Market Resilience Bodes Well for Economic Recovery // Universal Language for Healthcare: General Authority Embraces Global Coding System // Court Sides with Coinbase on Wallet Service, But Staking Program Remains in Limbo // In Lok Sabha Polls In Punjab, AAP Is Advantageously Placed As Against Its Three Rivals // No running of govt from jail, says Delhi Lt Governor // Konica Minolta is named ASEAN 2023 Market Leader in Colour Light and Mid Digital Production Printers // Hullabaloo About Electoral Bonds May End Up As A Whimper Pre And Post Poll // 2024 Lok Sabha Election Is A Historic Battle Against The Advent Of Fascism In India // Ajman Celebrates Conclusion of Ramadan Activities with Grand Ceremony // Experience Ultimate Shopping Freedom at 4.4 Shopee Spree: Don’t Worry, Shop Shopee! // Renewables Surge Sets Record, But Global Equity Lags // Near Miss at Kolkata Airport: IndiGo Plane Makes Contact with Stationary Air India Express // Sunshine’s Debut Features Leave Tech World Scratching Its Head // AI Boost for Galaxy Devices: Samsung Expands One UI 6.1 Update //