🔗 Share this article

Are your professional networking followers recognizing you as a thought leader? Do numerous commenters applauding your insights on growing your business? Are headhunters making contact to explore opportunities?

Should that not be the case, the reason could be your gender.

The Experiment: Modifying Profile Gender for Better Visibility

Dozens of women participated in an organized professional network test recently following popular discussions suggested that switching their profile gender to "male" boosted their network presence.

Other testers rewrote their professional summaries to incorporate what they termed "masculine-oriented" terminology - adding action-focused business buzzwords like "drive", "revolutionize" and "expedite". Anecdotally, their visibility similarly increased.

Algorithmic Bias Questions Brought Up

The improved metrics has caused some to wonder whether an inherent gender bias in LinkedIn's algorithm prioritizes men who use professional networking terminology.

Like many large networking sites, LinkedIn utilizes a computerized system to determine which content are shown to which members - boosting some while reducing others.

Company Statement

In a recent blog post, LinkedIn acknowledged the phenomenon but stated it does not consider "personal characteristics" when deciding content distribution. Rather, the company mentioned that "hundreds of signals" affect how posts perform.

Changing gender in your settings does not influence how your posts appears in results or timelines.

Personal Experiences

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

"The statistics I'm observing indicate a 1,600% increase in visitor traffic and a thirteen-fold jump in content views," she commented.

Another professional, a marketing expert, began experimenting after observing her audience decrease substantially.

The Method

• Initially, she modified her profile gender to "man"
• Then, she used AI tools to rewrite her professional summary using "masculine-oriented" wording
• Lastly, she recycled previous content with comparable "agentic" style

The result was instantaneous: a more than fourfold rise in visibility within seven days.

The Downside

Despite the positive results, Cornish expressed unhappiness with the method.

"Before, my content were more personal - concise and clever, but also warm and relatable," she explained. "Currently, the masculine version was forceful and self-assured - similar to a white male being overly confident."

She discontinued the experiment after seven days, stating "Each day I continued, and results improved, I became angrier."

Varying Outcomes

Not all testers experienced positive results. One writer who modified both her profile gender to "male" and her ethnicity to "Caucasian" reported a reduction in reach and interaction.

"We know there's algorithmic bias, but it's very challenging to comprehend how it operates in specific cases or the reasons behind it," she remarked.

Wider Consequences

These experiments coincide with ongoing discussions about LinkedIn's unique position as both a professional network and community site.

Platform modifications in the past few months have reportedly resulted in female creators experiencing markedly lower visibility, resulting in informal experiments where the same posts by male and female users received dramatically unequal audience engagement.

System Details

Per LinkedIn, the platform uses AI systems to categorize and spread posts based on multiple factors, including post content and the user's professional identity.

The company states it regularly evaluates its systems, including "checks for gender-related disparities."

Company representative proposed that recent declines in certain members' visibility might originate from increased competition due to additional posts on the platform.

Evolving Environment

According to a tester observed, "masculine-oriented language" appears to be increasing on the platform.

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