LinkedIn·Thursday, 20 August 2026·6d ago

𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨. I read a mindblowing study (link in comments) this week that made me wonder.…

Elke Kraemer

Helping tech companies retain & attract more women in tech to boost innovation | Founder Clusity, the community of women in tech in Belgium

𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨. I read a mindblowing study (link in comments) this week that made me wonder. Researchers analysed 1.6 million GitHub developers and 30,000 Behance designers. Two different worlds. One male-dominated (10% women / 90% men), one more balanced (28% women / 72% men). Platforms used by HR and teamleads to get a hunch of a person's experience. Both showed the same result. Being a woman does not predict success on these platforms. Good, I thought. And then, you can already hear me coming... there is a but. Behaving in ways that are seen as "feminine" (collaborating, commenting, mentoring, certain specialisations) does predict less success. HR often calls those skills "soft skills." 60 to 90% of women's disadvantage in visibility, success and survival on these two platforms comes down to "feminine behaviour." In other words: women aren't penalised for who they are. They're penalised for what they do, for example when it looks like teamwork instead of solo hero-coding. On GitHub, women get up to 9x more attention than men. But that attention doesn't translate into being seen as an expert, or being hired for the job. How does this translate to a work environment? What's the culture in most tech companies reward? What are your criteria for a "strong profile"? Do you check someone's GitHub as a reference next to their CV? If you hadn't seen this study, how neutral would you have assumed your selection process to be? Wouldn't it just be ... normal, to carry the same bias as found in the study? Another uncomfortable part: more women in the field doesn't fix it. Behance has almost 30% women, and the effect is the same. The "critical mass" I always hoped would break the gender stereotype apparently isn't the fix I wanted it to be. The solution isn't only "hire more women." It's looking at what you actually reward, and whether "collaboration" counts as much as "code." At Clusity | The women in tech community, this is the work we do with tech companies: rebuilding the systems, hiring, career paths, culture, so women don't have to work twice as hard to be seen for what they can actually do. Curious how this looks for your team? Let's have an online coffie! Question to: CPO, CHRO and CTO: What do you think about the study and how this applies to the companies you working for?

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