Are Women Better Coders?

Computer codes written by women have a higher approval rating than those written by men, a study has found.

16:37 15 February 2016

US researchers have analysed nearly 1.4 million users of Github, an enormous developer community that has over 12 million users. The study has found that 78.6per cent of accepted pull requests – or suggested code changes – were made by women. The number for men is 74.6per cent.

 

However, the numbers are affected for those coders whose profiles made clear that they were women when compared to those whose gender was not obvious.

 

"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.

 

Computer scientists have found the study’s result “encouraging.”

 

Computer scientist Dr. Sue Black OBE said: "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.”