🔗 Share this article

Do your LinkedIn connections recognizing you as a industry expert? Are hordes of respondents applauding your advice on expanding your business? Are headhunters making contact to explore opportunities?

Should that not be the case, the reason could be your gender.

The Experiment: Changing Profile Gender to achieve Increased Reach

Dozens of female professionals joined an organized LinkedIn experiment recently after viral posts indicated that switching their profile gender to "male" enhanced their platform visibility.

Other testers modified their professional summaries to incorporate what they termed "bro-coded" language - adding results-driven business buzzwords like "propel", "transform" and "expedite". Anecdotally, their visibility also improved.

Systemic Preference Concerns Brought Up

The improved metrics has caused some to wonder whether a built-in sexism in LinkedIn's algorithm prioritizes men who use online business jargon.

Like many large networking sites, LinkedIn employs a computerized system to determine which posts appear to which users - promoting some while suppressing others.

Company Statement

In a recent blog post, LinkedIn recognized the trend but claimed it does not factor in "demographic information" when deciding content distribution. Rather, the company mentioned that "numerous factors" influence how content perform.

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

Personal Experiences

A social media consultant, who changed her pronouns to "male pronouns" and her name to "a masculine version", described extraordinary outcomes.

"The numbers I'm observing show a sixteen-fold rise in profile views and a thirteen-fold jump in impressions," she noted.

Megan Cornish, a communications strategist, started testing after noticing her audience decline significantly.

The Process

• First, she modified her gender to "male"
• Then, she used AI tools to rephrase her profile using "male-coded" wording
• Finally, she recycled previous content with similar "agentic" style

The outcome was immediate: a more than fourfold rise in visibility within seven days.

The Downside

Despite the positive results, Cornish expressed dissatisfaction with the method.

"Before, my content were more personal - brief and insightful, but also friendly and relatable," she stated. "Currently, the bro-coded version was assertive and confident - like a white male being overly confident."

She abandoned the experiment after one week, saying "Each day I continued, and outcomes got better, I became more frustrated."

Mixed Results

Not all participants experienced favorable results. Cass Cooper who modified both her profile gender to "man" and her race to "Caucasian" reported a reduction in visibility and interaction.

"We know there's systemic preference, but it's extremely difficult to comprehend how it functions in specific cases or the reasons behind it," she commented.

Broader Implications

These experiments occur alongside ongoing discussions about LinkedIn's distinctive position as both a professional network and community site.

Platform modifications in recent months have apparently resulted in female creators experiencing significantly reduced visibility, resulting in informal experiments where identical content by men and women received vastly different reach.

System Details

Per LinkedIn, the platform uses artificial intelligence to classify and spread posts based on multiple factors, including post content and the member's career profile.

The company claims it frequently assesses its systems, including "checks for inequalities based on gender."

A spokesperson suggested that current reductions in some users' reach might stem from higher volume due to additional posts on the network.

Changing Landscape

As one participant noted, "masculine-oriented language" appears to be increasing on the network.

"Users typically consider LinkedIn as more businesslike and polished," she commented. "This is evolving. It's turning into increasingly aggressive and unpredictable."