Women on LinkedIn Test Algorithm with Male Profiles

Flipping their gender setting to “male” and even posting photos with fake moustaches, a growing number of women on LinkedIn have posed a provocative challenge to what they allege is an algorithmic bias on the platform.

Last month, female users began claiming that adopting a male identity dramatically boosted their visibility on the professional networking site, setting off a chain reaction.

Women adopted male aliases – Simone became Simon – swapped their pronouns for he/him,and even deployed AI to rewrite old posts with testosterone-laden jargon to cultivate what they describe as an attention-grabbing alpha persona.

To add a dash of humour, some women uploaded profile photos of themselves sporting stick-on moustaches.

The result? Many women said their reach and engagement on LinkedIn soared, with once-quiet comment sections suddenly buzzing with activity.

“I changed my pronouns and accidentally broke my own LinkedIn engagement records,” wrote London-based entrepreneur and investor Jo Dalton, adding that the change boosted her reach by 244 per cent.

“So here I am, in a stick-on moustache, purely in the interest of science to see if I can trick the algorithm into thinking I am a man.”

‘Gendered discrepancies’

When a female AFP reporter changed her settings to male