A growing number of women here on LinkedIn are running a collective experiment: switching their profile gender and pronouns to male.
The results? A significant jump in profile views and post impressions. They’re not doing it for visibility, but to expose how algorithmic bias works on a platform meant to create economic opportunity.
Here’s what’s happening. Women have less access to the internet globally, which means algorithms are trained on fewer data points from them. These systems then replicate real-world inequalities by making women less visible online, including on LinkedIn.
The implications are serious. If women’s posts and profiles are systematically suppressed, they lose out on networking, recruitment and leadership opportunities that the platform is designed to enable.
As Cindy Gallop, founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn Academy, who co-led the experiment earlier this year, puts it: “Algorithmic suppression equals economic oppression.”
