🔗 Share this article

Do your professional networking followers recognizing you as a thought leader? Do numerous commenters applauding your advice on growing your business? Are headhunters reaching out to explore collaborations?

If not, the explanation might be that you're not male.

The Experiment: Modifying Profile Gender for Increased Reach

Dozens of female professionals participated in a collective professional network test this week after viral posts suggested that switching their gender to "male" enhanced their platform visibility.

Other testers rewrote their professional summaries to incorporate what they termed "masculine-oriented" language - inserting results-driven business buzzwords like "drive", "transform" and "expedite". Anecdotally, their exposure also improved.

Systemic Preference Questions Brought Up

The engagement increase has caused some to wonder whether an inherent sexism in the platform's system prioritizes male users who employ professional networking terminology.

Like most major social media platforms, LinkedIn employs a computerized system to determine which posts appear to which users - promoting some while suppressing others.

Company Statement

Through a blog post, LinkedIn acknowledged the phenomenon but stated it does not factor in "demographic information" when determining content distribution. Rather, the company mentioned that "numerous factors" influence how content perform.

Changing gender in your settings does not affect how your posts shows up in results or timelines.

Individual Results

Simone Bonnett, who changed her gender identifiers to "male pronouns" and her profile name to "a masculine version", reported extraordinary outcomes.

"The statistics I'm seeing indicate a sixteen-fold rise in visitor traffic and a 1,300% increase in content views," she noted.

Megan Cornish, a marketing expert, began experimenting after noticing her reach decline significantly.

The Method

• Initially, she modified her gender to "man"
• Then, she used artificial intelligence to rephrase her profile using "male-coded" language
• Finally, she repurposed previous content with similar "agentic" language

The result was instantaneous: a more than fourfold rise in visibility within seven days.

The Downside

Although the success, Cornish voiced dissatisfaction with the method.

"Before, my content were softer - concise and insightful, but also friendly and relatable," she explained. "Now, the masculine version was assertive and self-assured - like a Caucasian man being overly confident."

She abandoned the experiment after seven days, stating "Every day I continued, and outcomes improved, I became angrier."

Mixed Results

Not all participants encountered positive outcomes. Cass Cooper who changed both her profile gender to "man" and her ethnicity to "Caucasian" described a decrease in reach and interaction.

"We understand there's systemic preference, but it's extremely difficult to understand how it operates in specific cases or the reasons behind it," she remarked.

Wider Consequences

These tests occur alongside continuing discussions about LinkedIn's distinctive role as both a professional network and social space.

Platform modifications in recent months have apparently caused women professionals experiencing markedly lower exposure, resulting in informal experiments where the same content by men and women received vastly different reach.

Technical Explanation

Per LinkedIn, the network uses AI systems to classify and spread content based on various elements, including post content and the member's career profile.

The company states it regularly evaluates its algorithms, including "checks for inequalities based on gender."

Company representative suggested that recent declines in certain members' visibility might stem from increased competition due to additional posts on the platform.

Changing Landscape

According to a tester noted, "masculine-oriented language" appears to be growing on the platform.

"Users typically consider LinkedIn as more professional and polished," she commented. "That's changing. It's becoming increasingly aggressive and less controlled."