Will LinkedIn Address the Influencer Program’s Gender Lopsidedness?

How do you feel about the fact that only 25.9% of LinkedIn’s Influencers are female?

It frustrates me.

I’m concerned that nearly every time LinkedIn recommends I follow Influencers, they’re usually always men. (I only follow Susan Cain.) Am I regularly encouraged to follow men such as Richard Branson and Deepak Chopra because something in my search history suggests (incorrectly) to LinkedIn’s algorithms that I’d follow these kinds of men? Indeed, does the algorithm even factor in that I’m a guy?

Perhaps worse yet is the possibility that there might be very little “thinking” behind which Influencers LinkedIn recommends I follow. For instance, am I just randomly shown Influencers who have, say, over one million followers?

A year after LinkedIn launched their Influencer program in October 2012, there were over 300 Influencers. One month ago, there were 752 Influencers, 194 of which were women. Diving a little deeper into these figures, I found that:

• 26 Influencers have 1,000,000+ followers. Of these, only 7 (26.9%) are female.
• 396 Influencers have 100,000+ followers. Of these, only 107 (27%) are female. 

As you can see, the low numbers of women represented in the Influencer program is consistent across the board.

#LinkedInSoMale?

By Lee Bob Black.

P.S. Some additional thoughts:

• The data supporting my above numbers is from May 11, 2016. The data is in a spreadsheet that’s viewable via http://bit.ly/women26. Images of Influencers are also in this PDF.
• I acknowledge that there’s a possibility I misidentified a particular Influencer’s gender. If so, I’m very sorry. Please let me know and I’ll fix any mistakes.
• In February and May 2016, there was a “See More” link at the bottom of the “Influencers” section of https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/discover. I know because I clicked it dozens of times to view everyone in the Influencer program. (I copied these lists and uploaded them here and here.) As of today on that LinkedIn page, the “See More” link still appears under the “Channels” and “Publishers” sections. However, the “See More” link no longer appears under the “Influencers” section, thus removing the ability to click it dozens of times and find out exactly how many Influencers are in the program. Why did LinkedIn remove that one “See More” link? Intrigued? So am I. Don’t believe me? Check out this March 2015 archive of that LinkedIn page and see how it clearly has a “See More” link at the bottom of the “Influencers” section.
• In August 2013, Amanda Bohan Vahab Tweeted an image showing that LinkedIn recommend she follow various Influencers—the top 15 being all men. Her husband, Daniel Vahab, wrote about it.
• In September 2015, Jakob Heuser analyzed two new so-called LinkedIn Lists. He found that the Next Wave list, comprised of 150 professionals under 35 years of age, included just 59 (~40%) women. He also found that the Top Voices list, comprised of 90 writers, included just 39 (~43%) women. Check out Heuser’s article and the supporting data.
• Almost always, the top five Influencers LinkedIn recommends I follow are male. Here are two screenshots, the first from May this year, the second from this week.

Thanks for reading.