To clarify, it's not my research, I just found it. meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/290727/… Delineated here. I have further thoughts regarding the impact and implication. Also, read the comments responding to that answer carefully. And, you're not alone. This started in 2015 with Tableflip. My Twitter handle is the same as my handle here if you'd like to chat. :)

@Phillip - Given that the question asked in part whether any women contribute, it seems like saying that most top contributors seem male, while likely true, doesn't fully answer the question. Also, while a relative lack of female contributors certainly doesn't guarantee that certain views won't be represented, it definitely could result in a bias in the representation of political opinions. So I can't really share your sanguinity about this.

For instance, suppose that the gender representation of this site recapitulates Stack Overflow as a whole, with 7% women. (Perhaps there's some response bias there; it's hard to say). If 50% of men approve of US President Trump's performance, and 33% of women do (not made-up numbers), then an answer that approves of Trump's performance might have a nearly even balance of upvotes and downvotes on average, as opposed to being 40% upvotes with a more even gender balance. It thus rises to be the top answer, and is more likely to be accepted and receive ever more upvotes simply by prominence.

@Obie2.0 You appear to have completely skipped the research I provided that breaks down the participation of women on Stack Overflow in detail along with why women make ourselves invisible. To summarize that paper since you cba to read it: threads like this, to which men flock to post sentiments like these (as with this thread, almost always unchallenged by any so-called allies), are why we don't appear to participate. :) It's deliberate, and it's because of behavior including yours here and througout Stack that we feel compelled to hide. Yes, we're hiding. From you.

@janh By the way, if it hasn't been made crystal clear, I am absolutely feeling the same "vibe" as referenced by AquaticFire. Not that you'll acknowledge that I'm a woman seconding her motion as it's own concrete, specific example. Toward that, you were provided with the research up-thread and just clearly declined to review it, but nobody's going to hold you or any other dude here to that, because that's just not how Stack works. If I were to voice my actual opinion of any this, I would be met with immediate adverse administrative consequences. Because that's how Stack works.

@OpenSorceress - I apologize, did you mean to respond to me? If so, I was talking to Phillip, not criticizing your research. I'm fairly sure the point I was making was kind of similar to yours, not opposed to it, but if missed something, my mistake. Also, um, I did read what you linked, and I upvoted it, actually....

Anyway, what I wrote might have been vague or misleadingly worded. So as a more clear restatement for anyone who saw the previous comment: I expect that StackOverflow's gender bias is also present on this site. I think this is bad for the people it excludes, and also can have a negative effect on the site. One example might be a pro-Trump answer gaining lots of upvotes and being the top answer, which would be less likely to happen in a gender-equitable environment, but there are others.

@Obie2.0 It seems I was unclear, probably a consequence of my runaway negative feelings late at night. My remarks were more a much more broadly scoped observation of a pattern of behavior - of voicing a certain subset of presumptions and conclusions communicated with an observable shift in priorities (a singular lack of rigor being one example, by inventing statistical figures when actual data is assumed to not exist before effort is made to find any) not an indictment of you personally. I should have said "y'all" instead of you, or something.

And it's impossible to tender the even an abridged version of the full scope of those observed patterns here in comments, just the ones that have turned up here in the comments - all I can do is assert that they exist and handwave at the paper somebody else wrote that alludes to the same. Also, protip, it is possible to observe those same patterns yourself pretty easily. Just pick a board, search a tag like "gender" or "feminism" and look for commonalities in responses.

@OpenSorceress - I think I see what you're saying. I agree, statistical rigor and a knowledge of the research on gender disparities is very important. I wasn't really trying to say that my example was research in any meaningful sense (although those percentages were drawn from actual research, including I think the research you linked to), more giving an example to try to show Phillip one way in which I think gender disparities could be damaging to this site.

*Perception of gender disparities. One of the problems that often arises stems from the repeated subsequent handling of that hypothetical example has a way of conferring the weight of cross-referenced statement of fact. It further exposes a certain selective failure to interrogate that is not nearly as common under any other circumstances, which in turn points to a presumption that standards for citing are dramatically lowered in a manner which is consistently convenient to a male corporatist interest - ie, this can be measured according to who omits/demands sources, etc. and who obliges.

For the sake of rigor, I probably should have mentioned where those numbers were coming from. The percentage of men and women leaning for or against Trump came from here (news.gallup.com/poll/226178/…) or a similar poll, although I might have been sloppy with the numbers, and the percentage of women and men on Stackoverflow as a whole came from the Stackoverflow Developer survey, although I know it's been criticized and that the actual numbers could be different due to the factors you mentioned.

@OpenSorceress I'm not sure I totally understand what you mean by "the repeated subsequent handling of that hypothetical example" is. Do you mean that someone has come up with it before?

And I agree that perception of gender disparities can be an issue too, but I'm sure the disparities can be a problem by themselves.

Hi :)

I have a storied history of terrible outcomes with Stack chat.

The answer we were discussing could also serve as a specific example of the propensity to simply make arbitrary declarations based solely on opinion and having no discernable basis in reality - no effort to lend legitimacy through references, etc.

@OpenSorceress - I agree. I think Phillip does try to be fair, but dismissing the idea that a disparate representation of opinions could negatively affect the site seems very off-base to me, especially given the research mentioned by you and elsewhere.

Yes, and one of my core points is that Philipp and his answer here are in no way unique

That yes, it is downright peculiar in being uncharacteristic (I don't know him but that's usually how these things work out) and yet there it stands before our eyes and that is in no way unique

Wrt to negative experiences with chat, I've had some... interesting conversations with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Nation of Islam enthusiasts, and of course misogynists in SE chat, so I can definitely believe a lot of people would rather avoid it. ;)

I mean truly epic.

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/256254/… <- I'm one of the 2 women who was arbitrarily suspended for 7 days. My involvement in that dialogue amounted to "hi there" and "I'll go get a moderator"

I maintain that this post, along with the responses by Tim Post and so forth, effectively torpedoed my dev career.