Quantifying Indirect Gender Discrimination on Collaborative Platforms

Abstract: Digital collaborative platforms have become crucial venues of career advancement and individual success in many creative fields, from engineering to the arts. Indirect gender discrimination is a key component to gendered disadvantage on platforms. Such platforms carried the promise of opening avenues of advancement to previously discriminated groups, such as women, as platforms lack managerial gatekeepers with conventional prejudice. We analyzed the extent of indirect gender discriminatory on two diverse platforms, GitHub and Behance, focused on software development and fine arts and design. We found that the main cause of women's disadvantage in attention, success, and survival is largely due to indirect discrimination that varies between 60-90\% of total female disadvantage. Men and women are penalized if they follow highly female-like behavior, while categorical gender's impact varies by outcome and field. As platforms employ algorithmic tools and AI systems to manage users' activity, visibility and recommend new projects to collaborate, stereotypes rooted in behavior can have long-lasting consequences.