Is LinkedIn Really Biased Against Women?
November 26, 2025
LinkedIn is insisting there’s no gender bias.
😱 Women’s data is telling a very different story.
😱 Women switching their settings to “male” are seeing 700%–1,600% spikes in reach.
😱 Women of colour are seeing the opposite.
I’ve spent the last few weeks following the data, the experiments, the reporting, and analysing what’s really going on.
LinkedIn’s official response confirms the platform is now running on a new LLM (Large Language Model) driven feed.
And what I’m seeing matters for every woman who relies on LinkedIn for visibility, opportunity or authority.
So I’m trying to uncover:
💡 What’s actually happening, including why values-led posts are suddenly underperforming
✅ And how women can protect their visibility in a system that wasn’t built with us in mind
What the new data reveals... and what it means for your visibility.
Last week, while many women were busy running DIY gender experiments to see what happened when they changed their gender to “male” or “prefer not to say”, I had a very different post take off.
It started with two words spoken to a female journalist on Air Force One:
“Quiet, piggy.”
Every woman knew exactly what that moment felt like.
Being shut down. Being made small. Doing that instant calculation:
Do I speak up? Will it make this worse? What will this cost me?
That post reached more than 35,000+ impressions in just a couple of days because it named a pattern we all recognise in politics, workplaces, and boardrooms.
And whether we’re talking about a president on a plane or an algorithm in a feed, the pattern is the same:
Women’s voices are easier to shut down than raise up.
So when #WearthePants exploded — women switching their LinkedIn settings to “male” and suddenly seeing 700%, 1,300%, even 1,600% spikes in reach — it didn’t land in a vacuum.
It landed in lived experience.
Here’s what I’ve pieced together from the data, what I’m tracking for my clients, and what we do next.
Where This Data Comes From (and Why I’m Not Making This Up)
Everything here is drawn from documented reporting and platform-wide analytics, including:
Geri Stengel’s analysis of gender-switch experiments (+818%, +700%, +400% visibility spikes)
The Guardian's investigation into #WearthePants (+1,300–1,600% increases; declines for some women of colour)
Controlled tests by Cindy Gallop & Jane Evans (identical content → men outperforming women despite smaller followings)
LinkedIn’s official response via Sakshi Jain (Head of Responsible AI) (“We don’t use gender,” while still testing outcomes by demographic groups)
Public case studies from women repeating the experiment
My own analytics review across client accounts since early October (showing a clear shift in communication styles being rewarded)
Conversations among LinkedIn strategists, noting volatility in women’s visibility since Q3
You’re not imagining it. You’re not overreacting.
There’s a pattern, and it’s not coming from thin air.
1. What the Experiments Are Showing (And What They’re Missing)
The headline numbers were impossible to ignore:
Changing gender to “male” → +700% impressions
Changing name + pronouns → +1,300–1,600% reach
Using more “agentic” / male-coded language → +400% engagement
And yet:
Women of colour, including Cass Cooper, MHR saw declines after similar changes.
Here’s the nuance:
These weren’t controlled A/B tests. Most women changed several variables at once.
But messy tests can still reveal real patterns.
And the pattern I’ve been watching since October is this:
LinkedIn is currently rewarding communication styles aligned with traditionally masculine norms:
Direct over warm
Assertive over collaborative
Declarative over reflective
LinkedIn can say, “We don’t use gender as a ranking signal,” and be factually correct.
And women can still experience gendered outcomes.
Those two things can coexist — and do.
2. How the New Feed Actually Works (The Only Part You Need to Know)
No AI lecture just what you need to know is this:
Old LinkedIn:
“Show her posts to her network.”
New LinkedIn:
“Show her posts to clusters of people who behave like her.”
This means:
Your followers are NOT your guaranteed audience
Your reach can swing wildly when LinkedIn “retests” your account
If the system was trained on male-dominated data, it naturally elevates that tone
And here’s the important bit when it comes to your content :
The algorithm infers who you are from your writing style, tone, topics, and network composition. If it miscategorises you? Your visibility collapses silently.
Wrong cluster → low engagement
Low engagement → “not relevant”
“Not relevant” → restricted reach
Most people only realise this 3–6 months later.
3. What I’m Seeing With the Women I Work With (and my own content)
These are the messages landing in my inbox:
“My reach has dropped and I don’t know why.”
“Posts that always worked suddenly… don’t.”
“I’m getting engagement, but from the wrong audience.”
“My practical posts perform better than my values-led ones.”
“I’m exhausted trying to think about LinkedIn all the time.”
And underneath all of that:
The emotional labour of being visible
Safety concerns (DMs, comments, trolling)
Tone policing
The fear of being “too much”
This is why I’ll never say:
“It’s just the algorithm so just post more.”
Women aren’t inconsistent. We’re calculating risk every time we show up.
That changes everything.
4. The Rented Land Problem No One Wants to Talk About
LinkedIn is rented land.
You can:
Lose your account
Be restricted
Watch your reach collapse
Have your audience reshuffled overnight
…all without warning, and with no control.
So even if we all agreed tomorrow that LinkedIn is volatile and subtly biased…
Why are so many brilliant women so vulnerable to that volatility?
Because too many of us have built our entire visibility on a platform we don’t own.
LinkedIn is:
Privately owned
Not designed with women’s safety at the centre
Fully capable of changing the rules overnight
If your:
reputation
opportunities
inbound leads
speaking requests
sense of being known
all live on that one platform?
That’s not power. That’s fragility.
I’m not anti-LinkedIn, in fact I love it. It changed my life.
But I am anti-dependence.
That’s why I help women build visibility ecosystems that don’t collapse when the feed shifts:
LinkedIn → discovery
Email → depth
Website → authority
Speaking, PR, collaborations → amplification
In-person networking → relationships
LinkedIn is powerful. It just shouldn’t be your whole strategy.
It’s your launchpad for opportunities, not your entire platform.
5. So What Now?
Here’s my philosophy, and what I help women do:
I won’t tell you you’re imagining it. I won’t tell you to rename yourself 'Luke'. I won’t tell you to perform a version of authority that isn’t yours.
What I will say:
✨ Name the bias
✨ Work strategically with the reality we have
✨ Build power in places LinkedIn can’t switch off
Here’s how I support women to do that:
✔ Transform — Profile Rewrite & Repositioning
Most women’s profiles undersell them. I rewrite your entire presence so the algorithm and the humans understand your actual expertise.
✔ Reinvention — Visibility Accelerator for Women (Group Programme) Partnership
For women who want this handled. I monitor shifts, adjust strategy, manage content, and build your ecosystem.
✔ 1:1 Voice — Executive Reputation & Ghostwriting Partnership
For senior women who want their reputation managed discreetly by someone who understands their vision, tone, and authority.
The goal?
You, fully yourself. You, fully seen.
Not diluted. Not masculinised. Not disappearing when the algorithm wobbles.
Bringing It Back to “Quiet, Piggy”
That moment went viral because it was loud.
But most silencing isn’t loud.
It’s:
Being interrupted
Being glossed over
Watching less-qualified men get more airtime
Or quieter still:
An algorithm deciding your content is “less relevant”
A feed reshuffle hiding your posts
A pattern that punishes you before you even speak.
You can’t fix all of that.
But you can decide you’re not going to disappear.
Your voice, visibility and reputation deserve strategic care... not scraps of your time at the end of the day, or a notes app full of half-written posts you never dared to share.
That’s the work I’m here to do with you.
Because every woman deserves to be recognised, respected and remembered. Not dismissed by an algorithm.
Work With Me
If this has hit a nerve and you're thinking:
“I know I’m good at what I do. I’m just not visible enough — and I’m tired of decoding this alone.”
Send me a message or book a call and we'll map out what strategic and sustainable visibility looks like for you.
You don’t need to “wear the pants” for an algorithm to take you seriously. You get to be fully you and fully seen.
