Professional Network Visibility Boost: Women Find Success By Pretending to be Men
Do your professional networking connections recognizing you as a thought leader? Do numerous commenters praising your insights on growing your venture? Do recruiters reaching out to discuss collaborations?
If not, the reason could be your gender.
The Experiment: Changing Gender Identity to achieve Increased Reach
Numerous female professionals joined a collective LinkedIn experiment recently after popular discussions suggested that switching their profile gender to "male" enhanced their network presence.
Other testers modified their professional summaries to include what they called "masculine-oriented" terminology - inserting results-driven professional jargon like "drive", "transform" and "expedite". Anecdotally, their visibility also improved.
Systemic Preference Concerns Brought Up
The improved metrics has caused some to wonder whether a built-in gender bias in LinkedIn's algorithm favors men who use professional networking terminology.
Like many large social media platforms, LinkedIn utilizes a computerized system to decide which posts are shown to which members - boosting some while reducing others.
Company Statement
Through a blog post, LinkedIn acknowledged the trend but claimed it does not factor in "personal characteristics" when determining content distribution. Rather, the company explained that "hundreds of signals" influence how content are received.
Changing gender on your profile does not affect how your posts appears in search or feed.
Individual Results
A social media consultant, who changed her gender identifiers to "male pronouns" and her profile name to "Simon E", reported extraordinary results.
"The statistics I'm seeing show a sixteen-fold rise in visitor traffic and a 1,300% increase in content views," she noted.
Megan Cornish, a communications strategist, began experimenting after observing her audience decrease significantly.
The Process
- First, she changed her profile gender to "male"
- Subsequently, she used AI tools to rephrase her profile using "male-coded" language
- Finally, she recycled old posts with comparable "agentic" language
The outcome was instantaneous: a more than fourfold rise in reach within one week.
The Downside
Although the success, Cornish expressed unhappiness with the approach.
"Previously, my posts were more personal - brief and clever, but also warm and relatable," she explained. "Now, the bro-coded version was forceful and confident - like a white male being overly confident."
She discontinued the experiment after seven days, saying "Every day I persisted, and results got better, I became angrier."
Mixed Results
Not all testers experienced positive outcomes. Cass Cooper who changed both her gender to "man" and her ethnicity to "Caucasian" described a reduction in visibility and interaction.
"We know there's systemic preference, but it's extremely difficult to understand how it functions in specific cases or why," she remarked.
Wider Consequences
These experiments occur alongside continuing discussions about LinkedIn's distinctive position as both a professional network and community site.
Platform modifications in recent months have reportedly resulted in female creators experiencing markedly lower exposure, leading to informal experiments where the same posts by male and female users received dramatically unequal reach.
Technical Explanation
According to LinkedIn, the platform uses AI systems to classify and distribute posts based on multiple factors, including what's shared and the member's career profile.
The company states it frequently assesses its systems, including "examinations of inequalities based on gender."
A spokesperson proposed that current reductions in certain members' visibility might stem from increased competition due to additional posts on the platform.
Changing Landscape
As one participant noted, "masculine-oriented language" appears to be increasing on the network.
"People often view LinkedIn as more businesslike and polished," she remarked. "That's changing. It's becoming increasingly competitive and less controlled."
