MSR 2023
Dates to be announced Melbourne, Australia
co-located with ICSE 2023
Tue 16 May 2023 14:59 - 15:05 at Meeting Room 110 - Human Aspects Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik

Implicit gender bias in software development is a well-documented issue, such as the association of technical roles with men. To address this bias, it is important to understand it in more detail. This study uses data mining techniques to investigate the extent to which 56 tasks related to software development, such as assigning GitHub issues and testing, are affected by implicit gender bias embedded in large language models. We systematically translated each task from English into a genderless language and back, and investigated the pronouns associated with each task. Based on translating each task 100 times in different permutations, we identify a significant disparity in the gendered pronoun associations with different tasks. Specifically, when starting with the pronoun “she”, requirements elicitation was associated with the pronoun “he” in only 6% of cases, while testing was associated with “he” in 100% of cases. Additionally, tasks related to helping others had a 91% association with “he” while the same association for tasks related to asking coworkers was only 52%. These findings reveal a clear pattern of gender bias related to software development tasks and have important implications for addressing this issue both in the training of large language models and in broader society.

Tue 16 May

Displayed time zone: Hobart change

14:35 - 15:15
Human AspectsTechnical Papers / Data and Tool Showcase Track at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
14:35
12m
Talk
A Study of Gender Discussions in Mobile Apps
Technical Papers
Mojtaba Shahin RMIT University, Australia, Mansooreh Zahedi The Univeristy of Melbourne, Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, Ali Rezaei Nasab Shiraz University
Pre-print
14:47
12m
Talk
Tell Me Who Are You Talking to and I Will Tell You What Issues Need Your Skills
Technical Papers
Fabio Marcos De Abreu Santos Northern Arizona University, USA, Jacob Penney Northern Arizona University, João Felipe Pimentel Northern Arizona University, Igor Wiese Federal University of Technology, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University
Pre-print
14:59
6m
Talk
She Elicits Requirements and He Tests: Software Engineering Gender Bias in Large Language Models
Technical Papers
Christoph Treude University of Melbourne, Hideaki Hata Shinshu University
Pre-print Media Attached
15:05
6m
Talk
GitHub OSS Governance File Dataset
Data and Tool Showcase Track
Yibo Yan University of California, Davis, Seth Frey University of California, Davis, Amy Zhang University of Washington, Seattle, Vladimir Filkov University of California at Davis, USA, Likang Yin University of California at Davis
Pre-print