🔗 Share this article

Do your LinkedIn followers viewing you as a thought leader? Do numerous commenters praising your insights on expanding your business? Do recruiters making contact to discuss opportunities?

Should that not be the case, the explanation might be that you're not male.

The Test: Changing Gender Identity to achieve Increased Reach

Numerous female professionals joined a collective LinkedIn experiment recently following popular discussions indicated that changing their gender to "man" boosted their platform visibility.

Other testers rewrote their profiles to include what they termed "masculine-oriented" language - adding action-focused business buzzwords like "propel", "revolutionize" and "expedite". Anecdotally, their exposure similarly increased.

Systemic Preference Questions Brought Up

The engagement increase has caused some to wonder whether a built-in sexism in LinkedIn's algorithm favors male users who use online business jargon.

Like most major networking sites, LinkedIn utilizes an algorithm to determine which content appear to which members - promoting some while reducing others.

Platform Response

Through a blog post, LinkedIn recognized the phenomenon but stated it does not factor in "personal characteristics" when deciding content distribution. Instead, the company explained that "numerous factors" influence how posts are received.

Changing gender in your settings does not affect how your content shows up in search or feed.

Personal Experiences

Simone Bonnett, who modified her gender identifiers to "he/him" and her profile name to "a masculine version", described remarkable outcomes.

"The numbers I'm seeing show a 1,600% increase in profile views and a thirteen-fold jump in content views," she noted.

Another professional, a marketing expert, started testing after observing her reach decrease substantially.

The Method

• Initially, she changed her profile gender to "male"
• Then, she used artificial intelligence to rephrase her profile using "male-coded" wording
• Finally, she recycled old posts with similar "assertive" language

The result was instantaneous: a more than fourfold rise in visibility within one week.

The Downside

Although the success, Cornish voiced unhappiness with the approach.

"Previously, my content were more personal - concise and clever, but also friendly and relatable," she stated. "Now, the bro-coded version was assertive and self-assured - similar to a Caucasian man swaggering around."

She abandoned the experiment after seven days, saying "Every day I continued, and outcomes got better, I became more frustrated."

Varying Outcomes

Some participants encountered positive results. One writer who changed both her gender to "man" and her ethnicity to "white" described a reduction in reach and engagement.

"We know there's algorithmic bias, but it's very challenging to understand how it operates in particular situations or the reasons behind it," she commented.

Broader Implications

These experiments occur alongside continuing conversations about LinkedIn's unique role as both a business platform and social space.

Recent changes in the past few months have apparently caused female creators experiencing significantly reduced exposure, leading to unofficial tests where identical content by men and women received vastly different reach.

System Details

Per LinkedIn, the network uses artificial intelligence to classify and distribute content based on multiple factors, including what's shared and the member's career profile.

The company states it regularly evaluates its algorithms, including "examinations of gender-related disparities."

A spokesperson proposed that recent declines in certain members' visibility might stem from increased competition due to more content on the network.

Evolving Environment

As one participant noted, "masculine-oriented language" appears to be increasing on the network.

"Users typically consider LinkedIn as more businesslike and polished," she remarked. "That's changing. It's turning into increasingly competitive and less controlled."