Curious if this bias is predominantly men rejecting PRs from women, or if it also extends to women who review PRs.
We do have this data, and we did build graphs for women accepting men/women, and women accepting women/men. I'm not sure why this graph didn't make it onto the paper. @E?
- Josh Terrell •Our analysis (not in this paper -- we've cut a lot out to keep it crisp) shows that women are harder on other women than they are on men. Men are harder on other men than they are on women.
In light of the research on homosocial aggression (for a 2009 survey, see Phyllis Chesler's Woman's Inhumanity to Woman), this finding is worth highlighting. Why are people harder on people of the same gender and easier on members of the opposite gender? Is this consistent across, say, sexual orientation? There are interesting follow-up questions here, and it shouldn't be buried.
- Meredith Patterson •I agree it's interesting, but we didn't bury it.
In the part of the paper we cut, we performed four related investigations. One was looking at bias associated with women being hard on other women. The other three types were not in a shape that we thought were ready for release. I judged that we couldn't ethically include just the one part (however interesting the results), so we're not releasing that officially until all four investigations are complete.
- Emerson Murphy-Hill •That seems like a pretty crucial detail to cut. The popular media has already seized on this article with the opposite assumption.
- Kevin Krumwiede •Interesting! Can you estimate how much of the difference is caused by this intragender effect? Surely it are not just women rejecting women's pull requests?
- Felienne Hermans •
