When the Algorithm Thinks You’re a Man

Sep 28

5 min read

Last week I gave a six-minute presentation to my New Zealand Business Women’s Network (NZBW) group.

I talked about some of the things women are up against in the world of work right now.

Gender bias, ageism, AI and recruitment technology.

And then I talked about the other piece of the puzzle which are the stories we tell ourselves about what all of this means for us.

And I love how Paij Whineray (from my NZBW group) has been digging further into something we'd discussed that morning about claims that women are getting less visibility on LinkedIn.

And what she found sent me down a rabbit hole.

Last year, a number of women including Cindy Gallop and Jane Evans started experimenting with what happened when they changed the gender on their LinkedIn profiles to male.

Some reported dramatic increases in the reach of their posts.

Then Daniel Hires decided to try the reverse. For four days, he changed his name to Daniela, his gender to female and his pronouns.

According to Daniel, he changed nothing else. His reach dropped 26% on the first day. The following day it dropped another 48%. Day three it bounced back, before dropping again on day four.

Daniel was very clear that this wasn't a scientific study and neither were the experiments being conducted by women on the platform.

There are all sorts of variables involved in how content performs on LinkedIn, so we can't look at these experiments and conclude that LinkedIn's algorithm discriminates against women. LinkedIn itself says it doesn't use demographic information such as gender, race or age as a signal to determine how visible your content is. But it raises a much bigger question.

What happens when technology learns from a world that already contains bias?

When algorithms learn from human-created data, they can also learn the biases embedded within it — including gender bias.

Daniel finished his post with a question that particularly caught my attention as a career coach:

If this is happening with posts, what happens when hiring systems filter people?

Now THAT is something I think we need to be talking about.

So where does this leave us?

Let's look at where we can take some of that power back. For me, this is where we focus on what we can control.

Things we can't control.

We can't control the LinkedIn algorithm.

We can't control how an employer uses AI.

We can't control whether there's age or gender bias sitting somewhere inside a recruitment process.

We can't control who looks at our CV or what assumptions they make about us.

But there is a LOT we can control.

And one of the biggest opportunities I see for women is something we're already incredibly good at:

Relationships.

I see this over and over again in my work. Women are extraordinary relationship builders. We connect people, remember the little things and build trust. We help each other, make introductions, ask questions, share information and have conversations. Building relationships often comes so naturally that we don't even recognise it as the incredibly valuable skill it is.

And yet when it comes to our careers, we can completely underestimate the value of those relationships.

Instead, so much energy goes into scrolling through job boards, tweaking the CV again and submitting another application through an online portal. Then we wait hoping the algorithm chooses us.

What if we put more of our energy into the thing we're already brilliant at: building relationships? Start talking to people and tell them what you're exploring. Ask someone how they got into their field, reach out to a person doing a job you're curious about, have the coffee or reconnect with someone you worked with ten years ago. Even commenting on a LinkedIn post, joining a conversation or asking for an introduction can open a door.

Because your next opportunity is far more likely to come through a person than an algorithm.

This is something I teach extensively in my career programmes because I've seen again and again how powerful it is.

When you're considering a career change, it's easy to sit behind your computer trying to figure the whole thing out. But so much clarity comes from getting out there and investigating. Gather information, talk to people, test your assumptions and find out what's actually possible.

And be willing to dabble a little.

In fact dabbling is ESSENTIAL!

Dabbling is how you test the waters before diving in. It gives you a chance to find out whether something you think you might enjoy is something you actually enjoy. Your idea of a job, industry or career can be very different from the reality of it, so try it on. Take it for a test drive. Kick the tyres. Follow the things you're curious about and see where they lead.

And by midlife, you already have an incredible resource to help you do all of this. You've spent decades building relationships, friendships, professional connections and goodwill, often without even thinking of any of it as a "network." Those relationships give you people to talk to, questions to ask and opportunities to dabble in worlds you might otherwise only ever see from behind a screen.

Your network isn't something you need to build from scratch. You've been building it your whole life.

Which brings me back to where I started.

We absolutely need to keep asking hard questions about the technology increasingly sitting between people and opportunities, and challenging age and gender bias when we see it.

At the same time, we don't have to hand all of our power over to systems we can't control. There are still people on the other side of those systems — people we can talk to, learn from, build relationships with and perhaps even create opportunities with.

Because in a world increasingly driven by algorithms, relationships might just be one of the most powerful things we have.

And if all of this has you thinking about what's possible for your own next chapter, come and join us at BECOMING: The Next Chapter Is Yours on Thursday 22 October in Auckland.

BECOMING is an evening for women in midlife to step away from the noise of everyday life and create some space to think about themselves again — who you are now, what you want, and what you might be becoming next.

We'll be exploring identity, career, hormone health and style, with plenty of opportunity to connect with other women navigating this stage of life too.

You don't need to have your next chapter figured out. Come curious. Come ready to explore. And perhaps even dabble with some new possibilities.

The next chapter is yours.