Programmed differently? Testing for gender differences in
Python programming style and quality on GitHub

Programmed differently? Testing for gender differences in
Python programming style and quality on GitHub

gender, open-source software, computational methods, intersectional and feminist approaches, HCI.

The underrepresentation of women in open-source software is frequently attributed to women’s lack of innate aptitude compared to men: natu-
ral gender differences in technical ability (Trinkenreich et al., 2021). Approaching code as a form of communication, I conduct a novel empirical

study of gender differences in Python programming on GitHub. Based on 1,728 open-source projects, I ask if there is a gender difference in the
quality and style of Python code measured in adherence to PEP-8 guidelines. I found significant gender differences in structure and how Python
files are organized. While there is gendered variation in programming style, there is no evidence of gender difference in code quality. Using a
Random Forest model, I show that the gender of a programmer can be predicted from the style of their Python code. The study concludes that
gender differences in Python code are a matter of style, not quality.

Sian ^ Brooke

https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad049

20 November 2023

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