Women Write Better Computer Code Than Men

Computer code written by women has a higher approval rating than that written by men - but only if their gender is not identifiable, new research suggests.

The US researchers analysed nearly 1.4 million users of the open source program-sharing service Github.

They found that pull requests, or suggested code changes, made on the service by women were more likely to be accepted than those by men. The paper is awaiting peer review.This means the results have yet to be critically appraised by other experts.

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 researchers found women fared better if their gender was not clear. 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.

'Bias nonetheless'

"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.

Despite various high profile initiatives, tech firms continue to face challenges in terms of the diversity of their staff, in terms of both gender and ethnicity, particularly in more technical careers.

Just 16% of Facebook's tech staff and 18% of Google's are women according to figures released in 2015.

However the researchers' findings are still encouraging, computer scientist Dr Sue Black OBE told the BBC.

"I think we are going to see a resurgence of interest from women in not only coding but all sorts of tech-related careers over the next few years," she said. "Knowing that women are great at coding gives strength to the case that it's better for everyone to have more women working in tech.

"It was a woman - Ada Lovelace - who came up with the idea of software in the first place, we owe it to her to make sure that we encourage and support women into the software industry," Dr Black added.

BBC:

« Clinton Calls Cybersecurity ‘One of the Most Important Challenges’ for the Next U.S. President
Data Security – The Trends We Do Not See Coming »

CyberSecurity Jobsite
Perimeter 81

Directory of Suppliers

BackupVault

BackupVault

BackupVault is a leading provider of automatic cloud backup and critical data protection against ransomware, insider attacks and hackers for businesses and organisations worldwide.

The PC Support Group

The PC Support Group

A partnership with The PC Support Group delivers improved productivity, reduced costs and protects your business through exceptional IT, telecoms and cybersecurity services.

Resecurity, Inc.

Resecurity, Inc.

Resecurity is a cybersecurity company that delivers a unified platform for endpoint protection, risk management, and cyber threat intelligence.

Authentic8

Authentic8

Authentic8 transforms how organizations secure and control the use of the web with Silo, its patented cloud browser.

MIRACL

MIRACL

MIRACL provides the world’s only single step Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) which can replace passwords on 100% of mobiles, desktops or even Smart TVs.

Hotlava Systems

Hotlava Systems

HotLava network adapters enable today's powerful servers and workstations to deliver more productivity by reducing congestion at the network interface.

Mobile Guroo

Mobile Guroo

Mobile Guroo is a strategy and systems integrator for Enterprise Mobility Management projects.

Opscura

Opscura

Opscura (formerly Enigmedia) brings the reliable and cautious hands of operations together with the analytical minds of cyber experts and cryptography researchers.

INCIBE-CERT

INCIBE-CERT

INCIBE-CERT is the reference security incident response center for citizens and private law entities in Spain

Bugcrowd

Bugcrowd

As leaders in crowdsourced security testing, Bugcrowd connects companies and their applications to a crowd of tens of thousands of security researchers to identify critical software vulnerabilities.

Unitrends

Unitrends

Unitrends helps IT pros do more with less by providing an all-in-one enterprise backup and continuity solution.

Cyphercor

Cyphercor

Cyphercor is a leading smartphone and desktop-based two-factor authentication (2FA) provider.

mPrest

mPrest

mPrest is a global provider of mission-critical monitoring and control solutions for the defense, security, utility and Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) sectors.

DeviceAssure

DeviceAssure

DeviceAssure enables organizations to reliably identify counterfeit and non-standard devices with a real-time check on a device's authenticity.

Axcient

Axcient

Axcient offers MSPs the most secure backup and disaster recovery technology stack with a proven Business Availability suite.

iZOOlogic

iZOOlogic

iZOOlogic protects hundreds of the world’s leading brands, across banking, finance and government from cybercrime. We provide strong cyber defence solutions to protect client digital assets.

Acceptto

Acceptto

Acceptto offers the first unified and continuous authentication identity access platform with No-Password.

Alpha Omega Integration

Alpha Omega Integration

Alpha Omega creates new possibilities through intelligent end-to-end mission-focused government IT solutions.

Bitdefender

Bitdefender

Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader delivering best-in-class threat prevention, detection, and response solutions worldwide.

xdr.global

xdr.global

Xdr.global is a cybersecurity consulting firm, focused on promoting and aligning Extended Detection and Response (XDR) security solutions.

Chestnut Hill Technologies (CHT)

Chestnut Hill Technologies (CHT)

CHT provide Best Practices IT Cybersecurity and Technology Solutions and Consulting Support to the Mid Cap through Fortune 1000 Nationwide.