Company
Date Published
Author
Lindsey
Word count
645
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

A project was undertaken to analyze the gender distribution among the top 3,479 Stack Overflow users by using public APIs, specifically the Stack Exchange API and the Clarifai Visual Recognition API, via RapidAPI. The study found that out of these profiles, 1,515 had discernible gender images, with 5.6% classified as feminine and 94.4% as masculine. Notably, only one woman was identified among the top 100 users, highlighting a significant gender disparity. The analysis was complicated by the predominance of gender-neutral images and the limitations of the Clarifai Demographic Model, which is still in its alpha phase and struggled with non-human or illustrated profile pictures. The study suggests that future iterations could benefit from incorporating the Gender API, which uses names and location data to improve gender identification accuracy.