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What if anything has been done, or is being done, to make MathOverflow more welcoming to women - or at least less unwelcoming to women?

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    $\begingroup$ This was indeed seriously discussed. However, we are somewhat at a loss because of the unfortunate fact that everyone on the board is in fact a man, and thus our insights into how to make this site more appealing to women are severely limited. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 7 at 21:20
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    $\begingroup$ Sounds like a good motivation to add new board members and moderators! $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 7 at 21:42
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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps it is worth looking also at the previous discussions on the topic. Famously, there is this blog post by Izabella Laba: Why I’m not on MathOverflow It references a discussion on tea - tea seems to be down for some time - but the post can be found using Wayback Machine. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 7 at 22:33
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    $\begingroup$ I've been considering whether to chime in here; but to be honest I often find conversations of this type both exhausting and unrewarding. I haven't reread the original tea conversation, which I participated in as a grad student with too much spare time. I will say that ~15 years later I can still say I've had positive experiences with MathOverflow (the one time I got a negative comment it was swiftly deleted), but also that I post very few questions, and I'm aware that my experience is atypical of women on MO and that I've benefited from various forms of privilege. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 8 at 13:44
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    $\begingroup$ Those blog posts and discussions are 14-15 years old; it would be great to hear some more recent feedback, because surely the site and the SE network have changed in the meantime. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 8 at 14:55
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    $\begingroup$ Something this discussion has clarified for me is that the type of frustration I mentioned at the start of my previous comment is often in part caused by a lack of institutional memory -- in mathematical communities with an extreme gender ratio, I've found myself repeatedly having the same conversations with a different group of fresh faces who are new to the issues involved. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 9 at 13:35
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    $\begingroup$ I think that this question is valuable because it's helping to build a pool of institutional memory, and that answers like that contribute to this pool (like @BenWebster's, thank you!) will be the most helpful. (The discussion of what should be done, rather that what has been done, is also an important one to have, but I think less suited to the Q&A format.) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 9 at 13:40
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    $\begingroup$ I think we should be really careful about jumping to "the solution to problem x is asking women mathematicians to do more unpaid unrecognized service work." $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 9 at 16:49
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    $\begingroup$ @KevinWalker: It's hard to get good data, at MO we only know the gender breakdown of the top users because most people participate under some version of their real names. There was a SO survey and that was only 5% women, but there's no real data on other SE sites. I do think your question is very important, as most of the women I've heard talk about not participating in MO are also not interested in participating in any public math internet forum. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 9 at 19:12
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    $\begingroup$ @FrancescoPolizzi I believe Noah Snyder's comment was a response to the repeated suggestions in the comments of seeking more female moderators or even Gerry Myerson's suggestion of consulting a committee. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 13:04
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    $\begingroup$ @FrancescoPolizzi I interpreted Noah Snyder's comment on unrecognized service work very differently from you. Among women mathematicians I know (mostly based in the US), there is near universal agreement that they are asked/expected to serve on too many committees. If (1) we expect every committee to have at least one woman, and (2) the average committee size is $S$, and (3) proportion of women in the department is $W$, and (4) $1/S$ is significantly larger than $W$, then women will receive significantly more invitations to serve on committees than will men, leaving them less time to ... $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 14:56
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    $\begingroup$ While this is an important discussion and people should feel free to speak frankly, I would ask that everyone remain civil, and that we try to turn down the temperature a bit, especially in terms of comments directed at specific people $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 17:32
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    $\begingroup$ Why is it unwelcoming to women? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 6:34
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    $\begingroup$ I think there's a lesson to be learned from this thread (and every one like it), which is that if you care about MO being more welcoming to women the last thing you should do is open a thread about it at meta, which just brings out the worst impulses in a lot of people. See my comment on the first big discussion on this topic "this thread is the first thing on MO that has remarks unfriendly to women." If you have a good idea contact the mods directly. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 19:40
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    $\begingroup$ I am very much conscious that people not from MO are almost surely watching our collective behaviour in this discussion, and I would hope that the standards we hold ourselves to reflect in the best possible way on MathOverflow. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 23:45

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This is not quite a direct answer to the stated question, but I think it's worth pointing out that MathOverflow is not unique in this regard, and that there is some published research on the analogous question for StackOverflow: Paradise Unplugged: Identifying Barriers for Female Participation on Stack Overflow.

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    $\begingroup$ Very interesting paper, with surprisingly strong results. Of course SO may not translate directly to MO, but anecdotally their results seem pretty plausible for MO as well. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 11 at 19:19
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    $\begingroup$ Excellent survey, but what is the moral of it? Out of the 14 listed barriers only 2 (Fearing of negative feedback and Posting is too hard) are under our control and fall into the category of issues I mentioned: issues worth discussing and resolving, but not gender-specific in any way. The rest (like stranger discomfort, intimidating community size, etc.) have to be resolved on the side of the user, their resolution on our side is merely techncally unfeasible. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 0:32
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    $\begingroup$ "Nothing left to answer" is just an outstanding idea of a "barrier". Yes, when I'm posting my answer, I try to give as full and as elegant solution as I can so that it would be hard to anyone to add anything of value to it. And what does one expect me or anyone else to do instead? Yep, the amount of the feelings of uncertainty and insecurity when entering a new environment may have a correlation with gender that is inherited from the society as a whole, but all we can do here is to provide a decent respectful environment and maintain it, which has been done already. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 0:43
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    $\begingroup$ And another beautiful excerpt (from recommendations this time): "This would allow people to distinguish between questions that would take 5 minutes from those that might take 30 minutes to answer" Face it: my average time for answering a question is a few hours and the maximal one is a few months. If you expect to spend less time to make a really good contribution, then either you are much smarter than I, or you joined a wrong game. The first option is certainly available, but achieving it requires some noticeable time too. :lol: $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 1:50
  • $\begingroup$ So, it boils down to 1) excessively harsh criticism, 2) technical difficulties of posting, and 3) "boys club". I agree with 1), am not certain about 2) (I find posting easy, but the technical team may want to look into it) and, probably, am not qualified to pass a definitive judgement on 3). $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 1:53
  • $\begingroup$ @fedja Yes, even if we take this paper's assumptions and conclusions at face value, it's unclear what can be done on MathOverflow to change anything. But I think it does suggest that "activists" (if they wanted to) could do some things offline at their home institutions, e.g., going out of their way to "sell" MO to those who are unaware of MO and its features ("Awareness"), who might underestimate their own qualifications and ability to contribute ("Qualifications"), and who might enjoy MO as a feature of their in-person math community ("Stranger Discomfort," "Intim. Comm. Size"). $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 2:48
  • $\begingroup$ I'm by no means an activist in this sense, but I do often talk to my in-person colleagues about interesting questions on MO. If I were a professor, I might consider starting an "MO club" or something, targeted at grad students. I don't think I would specifically focus on women, but if the paper is to be believed, this type of intervention might be "disproportionately" helpful for women as a matter of course. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 2:54
  • $\begingroup$ @TimothyChow Sure. And you don't need to be "an activist" for that. Neither do you need to have a lengthy discussion on meta to just go and do it. One is free to try to encourage anybody to join MO or any other group without any special authorization from its mods. If one has a success story to share, it might be interesting to hear it and see what "seduction techniques" have been used and proved effective. I'm just claiming that beating the bush blindfolded is neither necessary, nor efficient. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 2:56
  • $\begingroup$ @fedja All fair points. At the same time, having a discussion on meta can have the effect of getting people to think about things they may not have considered before. For example, maybe someone will read my comment about an "MO club" and think, "That's a great idea!" and start one at their home institution. There was no reason they needed me to suggest it, but they may not have thought of it had this topic not been broached here on meta. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 3:00
  • $\begingroup$ @TimothyChow Correct. But inviting such ideas would require formulating the entire OP question quite differently (not mentioning the title/subject line). If you are in the mood of doing it in another thread, I'm all in favor :) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 3:03
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    $\begingroup$ @fedja Challenge accepted! $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 3:14
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    $\begingroup$ @TimothyChow Upvoted. Give me some time to think now (and, perhaps, to try a couple of things on my grad students) :) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 3:18
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Let me start by observing/agreeing that the proportion of women on MathOverflow is very far below the proportion in the mathematical community as a whole, and that there are many women whose insights and expertise would be highly appreciated if they chose to participate. Doubtless some of them do not participate because they do not see value in doing so, but anecdotes certainly suggest that some of them do not participate because they feel unwelcome.

In a comment, the OP says "So the reasons women feel unwelcome are well documented". I think that that is very far from being the case. People sometimes speak as though there was pervasive open rudeness or dismissiveness towards women on MO. But there is no private messaging on this platform, and even deleted posts are visible to moderators and users of sufficiently high reputation, so it should be straightforward to document such problems if they exist. I have seen very little open rudeness or dismissiveness, and in cases where I have seen it, there has been swift pushback from other users and moderators. I have not seen anyone else try to assemble examples of unwelcoming behaviour either. On the contrary, I have seen plenty of examples of women being given helpful answers to questions and appreciative responses to answers. Nonetheless, it is clearly the case that many women have found MO to be uncongenial. I think we have no chance of doing anything about that situation unless we can understand it more clearly, preferably with reference to specific examples. I have sometimes wondered, for example, whether there are significant or systematic differences in how different people perceive the 'tone of voice' of written comments; it seems hard to investigate that without data. Of course that would require help from people who have found MO to be uncongenial, and they have no obligation to help and might reasonably decide that they do not wish to.

I find it striking that the proportion of women on MO is far below the proportion on social media platforms where rudeness is common and there is no attempt by moderators to suppress it. This phenomenon seems mysterious to me and I have seen no serious attempt to explain it. It seems hard to make progress without more insight into that issue.

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    $\begingroup$ Even this seems to presuppose that women are trying MO and deciding to leave. As far as I can tell that’s not the main effect here, the main effect is that people who use MO even once are already overwhelmingly men. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 9 at 14:45
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    $\begingroup$ It's interesting that many women think the problems with MO are obvious and are tired of trying to explain them (cf Alison above, Isabella Laba's articles, and Barbara Fantechi at bsky.app/profile/barbarafantechi.bsky.social/post/3mbu3rgsiy22i), while many men act puzzled. The most benign possibility is that men are on average more comfortable with competitive, aggressive behavior than most women, so they don't see things the same way. (The very system of having reputation points encourages competition and dominance hierarchies.) Less benign explanations may also be true. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 0:59
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    $\begingroup$ @JohnC.Baez Although that seems to be a fair characterization of Fantechi's comment, I disagree that it's a fair characterization of Laba's remarks. (I also don't think it's a fair characterization of Alison's remarks, though I don't want to put words in her mouth.) For example, Laba's post says: "The obvious and immediate reason is that I don’t have the time. I’m not terribly active in other online communities, either, so it’s not like I’ve singled out MO for a boycott." That is, she's simply not interested in MO nor anything like it. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 1:36
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    $\begingroup$ Let me add to that, I do certainly agree that many women are tired of being asked to explain why they don't choose to spend their time on this particular project or that one. We should respect their choices and not feel like they owe us an explanation of why they choose to spend their time on other projects than the ones that we enjoy. If we want to support women mathematicians we'd be better off supporting their projects rather than trying to convince them that they should procrastinate the same way that I do. Fewer women participating in MO isn't actually hurting women, it's a hobby. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 1:48
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    $\begingroup$ @JohnC.Baez you suggest (as some other people have done) that comfort with competition is a relevant factor. I think that that has little explanatory power. For example, Google tells me that 40% of tennis players are women, and recreational tennis is often organised with a ladder system in which all players are ranked against each other, and every game has an explicit winner and loser. This is a purely zero-sum competition, unlike MO where any competition is a by-product of the central collaborative activity of helping people with their questions. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 11:40
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    $\begingroup$ @JohnC.Baez you also mention "aggression" and "dominance hierarchies". While I have seen a few comments that could be described as aggressive, it is not true to suggest that the community is comfortable with them; they are quickly criticised and often deleted by moderators. As for "dominance hierarchies", if you are just referring to the system of permissions tied to the reputation score then that is a highly tendentious choice of words, and if you are claiming that there is anything closer to the usual meaning then that is a serious accusation that you should support with evidence. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 11:51
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    $\begingroup$ In fact, it is possible to see these insulting or aggressive comments? To solve a problem, we should at least have some evidence to start. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 12:36
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    $\begingroup$ I have downvoted because this answers a different question than the one asked by OP. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 13:14
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    $\begingroup$ @FrancescoPolizzi another example that one could discuss is mathoverflow.net/questions/502067 (where the OPs user name suggests that they are female). There is a comment by user abx which I think is correct and provides useful information but is phrased in an abrupt way which could be considered rude. I wrote a fairly long and detailed answer (and Tim Campion wrote another one) partly because I did not want that comment to be the last word. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 13:23
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    $\begingroup$ @NeilStrickland: This is just a poorly phrased comment, which does not suggest sexism in any way. It does not seem to me that sporadic poor netiquette (physiological in a website with thousands of users and thousands of posts) suffices to indicate a systemic problem on MO. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 13:36
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    $\begingroup$ @FrancescoPolizzi I do not know how women would react on average to the example that I mentioned. They might say "that comment was just noise, the OP got the answer that she needed and was probably happy with that, and such comments are rare anyway". They might instead say "that comment would have made the whole experience deeply unpleasant, and there are many more similar examples which you have not noticed". They might instead say "MO has many problems, but this particular example is not what I am worried about". It is hard to know what to do without more information about that. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 14:31
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    $\begingroup$ Analogies are usually unhelpful, because everyone ends up arguing about whether it’s apt. But Tennis is particularly poorly chosen, as due to decades of pioneering work it’s the one sport that comes closest to having equal pay, and is by far the sport that compensates women athletes the most. The top 10 earning women athletes are usually like 80% tennis players. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 16:10
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    $\begingroup$ @NoahSnyder I don't see the pay of elite tennis players as being very relevant here. The point is that large numbers of women play recreational tennis with low-stakes competition and do not find the competitive component to be off-putting. The same is true of a large range of other sports with various different types of competition, e.g. mass-participation marathons or rock climbing. The evidence does not suggest that any level of competition automatically makes activities uncongenial to women, which seems to be a common suggestion in discussions about MO. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 16:40
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    $\begingroup$ I think if Mathematics were uniquely successful among the sciences in terms of recognizing, celebrating, and compensating women, that would trickle down to MO. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 16:41
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    $\begingroup$ @NeilStrickland: If the problem is really the presence of occasionally rude comments, I do not think that it is possible to do more of what we/the moderators are doing now: implement the netiquette (also suspending users who have repeatedly shown poor behaviour) and removing the inappropriate contents. And, if this is the problem, I am curious to know why the same problem is not present on Facebook, Reddit or X, where the tone of the comments is much more rude than here. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 17:53
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There was a group of interested users (including, but far from limited to, the moderators and board) which had some extensive discussions about this in January through March 2021 (unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to access the text of these discussions any more; we may well have intentionally set them to expire so people could be frank). This was really about the more general issue of how to make MO more welcoming of a broader group of users. I think there were some productive things that came out of that conversation (in particular, the realization that as moderators, we needed to be more proactive about pushing back on microagressions and the creation of a Discord group where people could try to call in constructive help on a question where they thought this was an issue). Obviously, this is not really adequate to the scale of the problem, and has a natural tendency to decay (the last post on the Discord was in August 2024, and it has not been very active since 2022), but that's where we are at the moment.

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    $\begingroup$ In terms of documenting what steps have already been taken, it's maybe worth adding to this answer that we no longer display reputation on the main page (as pointed out by Federico above). $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 22:12
  • $\begingroup$ @NoahSnyder Is replacing the exact time stamp of the latest login by some vague approximation ("this week", "more than a month ago", etc.) also one of them? I find the latter (I don't care much about the former) somewhat counterproductive for my ways of communication to other posters, but if one has reliable data showing that any of these two actions made any statistically significant change for the better, I'll support their implementation despite I would prefer the old way myself (and if not, I'll just consider them rather pointless though not excessively harmful :-) ) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 29 at 13:47
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I'm not really sure that anything really needs to be done in this respect. There are several rather unwelcoming tendencies here (and I am prone to making some fuss about them now and then) but I do not find any of them gender-specific in any way unless we accept the belief that the female mathematician psychology is somehow drastically different from the male mathematician one, the belief I personally do not share. In my humble opinion of an old stupid male, if someone's question is answered in full and all clarifications of unclear places are provided in a polite and reasonably timely manner (instead of being closed for some ridiculous reason like "not research level" upon being posted), that is all one is really entitled to regardless of their gender, nationality, religion, galaxy of origin, number of eyes, body chemical composition, or anything else. The rest is privileges, not rights, and nobody has any obligation to provide them, especially when nobody has the slightest idea of what exactly is really being requested. All that talk about general "competitiveness" or "rudeness" influencing women more than men is a sheer BS. Yep, there were several comments to my posts in which I used the words "damn", "hell" and "shit" that went like "Watch your foul tongue!", but I've talked to many female persons in my life and if one seriously tries to convince me that they never use swear words or never act aggressively, I'll just laugh in his or even her face.

In general, I find the questions of the type "What is being done to accommodate the needs of ...?" well posed only if they are accompanied by the clear list of those needs. I see no point in wild guessing here. As I said, I see some issues, but when they arise, the gender does not seem to me to be a factor at all. Possibly, those issues are more repelling to an average female person than to an average male person, so resolving them may be more beneficial for the female users. However, I find them worth resolving regardless of anything and being discussed without any gender references. Obvious minor things like using he/she or they when the gender is not certain have been implemented long ago and are more or less maintained. The major things have never been here, as far as I can judge (nobody has ever written something like "Of course, the post was unclear! What would you expect from a girl?" in the comments, not in any of the threads I've seen, at least). At this point the request seems to be at the level "Go I don't know where and bring me I don't know what". We can try to do even that, of course, but then one shouldn't be surprised if what we bring is exactly opposite to what was desired.

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Being more welcoming, more polite and more supportive will surely attract more people and so, presumably, more women.

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    $\begingroup$ Also being more polite and supportive would attract a broader range of users, not just ''more people''. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 12 at 13:43
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    $\begingroup$ I would like to say that in my experience, the cordiality of MO stands above all social media and discussion sections on the internet, including other stackexchanges. Of course this impression could be due to bias or luck, but that's my observation. My belief is that it's partially due to the standard of objectivity to which we hold ourselves as mathematicians. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 18:31
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Here is something that will be done this week, by myself, and I hope others have done / are doing / will do the same. At the next opportunity, I will ask my female colleagues, whom I respect very much, how they feel about MathOverflow, and what ways, if any, they think it could improve to feel more welcoming to them. This course of action will take some time to carry out on a meaningful scale, but it should in principle be able to identify what the problem actually is and is likely to be able to identify the right ways to mitigate it since it consults directly the attitudes and wishes of female mathematicians.

EDIT: I managed to ask only two women so far. One response was that she didn’t have much awareness of MO, so perhaps spreading the information was welcoming. The other said she doesn’t have time and generally tries to avoid addictive things on the internet. I will continue to gather opinions but without being overly eager or intrusive.

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    $\begingroup$ While it would be useful to gather more information, I would recommend being quite careful about this. If you feel negative about something, and cannot quite put your finger on what is the problem, and someone presses you in a way that suggests they might not believe that the problem really exists, and they think you owe them an explanation, then that can be quite unpleasant. And in my experience it is common that people feel that there is a problem, but they cannot put their finger on what it is. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 17:40
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    $\begingroup$ @NeilStrickland Don't worry, I have friendly relationships with my colleagues, and I do not mean to conduct an inquisition or have a debate. I just want to know what they think. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 18:13
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    $\begingroup$ The downvotes are interesting. Are people actually against having friendly conversations with their colleagues about these issues? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 20:13
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    $\begingroup$ @MonroeEskew this is not an answer to the question. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 21:26
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    $\begingroup$ Additionally, you deleted your prior answer than more or less included your main point from that into this answer, better would have been to edit your existing answer, imho. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 21:42
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts Why is it not an answer to the question? It is something that is being done to make MO more welcoming. The reason I didn’t resurrect that other answer is the comments were all about anonymity, the discussion of which I wish to abandon. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 23:15
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    $\begingroup$ I commend the actions, please don't take me wrong. I think that perhaps having the discussions first and then reporting back might make more sense. Currently it's saying "I'm going to find out". But I'm ok with retracting my blanket comment. If you had edited your old answer and flagged the comments as no longer relevant/needing mod attention they could have been cleaned up. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13 at 23:22
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As John already brought up the topic of reputation points in a comment, let me elaborate: Males rank higher in trait competitiveness (see any of the top four studies on sex differences in competitiveness, and probably most of the other ones; I just stopped checking at four). This is not saying that the reputation point system drives women away (maybe it does, but not for this reason), but it suggests that it attracts men to a larger degree than it does women.

Of course, this doesn't really answer the "what to do" question: it merely suggests a way to attract fewer men (removing reputation points) rather than a way to attract more women.

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    $\begingroup$ Well, in fact, gamification is part of the story here. MO is not really a job; it's a hobby. And the score is an incentive to play. A possibility could be removing negative votes if they are considered "hurtful", but I do not know if this is possible (and if it is really useful). $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 19:26
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    $\begingroup$ @FrancescoPolizzi: In my experience looking at vote counts, downvotes are almost non-existent on MO. Though maybe new users get too many before they figure out what is expected of a question or answer (there are indeed a few unwritten rules). $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 19:39
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    $\begingroup$ A few years ago we decided to hide user reputation from the interface; has it had an effect on the participation of women? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 21:12
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    $\begingroup$ I think we should be very careful about trying to draw conclusions from the literature on supposed sex differences: 1. the scientific quality of the social science literature is often quite low, and 2. none of us have the credentials needed to really parse that literature and figure out what to take seriously and what is just bs, and 3. mathematicians are a very non-random measure 0 subset of the general population, so I’m skeptical that we can draw conclusions about us even from the good parts of the social science literature. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 10 at 21:38
  • $\begingroup$ There are two ways engagement with this website might be unwelcoming in a way that favors one gender: explicit and implicit. Implicit bias would mean that structural features tend to be more attractive to one group than another, without those features having anything directly to do with those group identities. Theories along these lines can go either way in advocacy— either saying the result isn’t a problem, like this answer, or that it is and that we should change something. Explicit theory rejects this and says the disparity is caused by targeted hostility. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 22 at 20:46
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    $\begingroup$ I'm a dude and I for one am bothered by the gamification. I don't like all the scoring and badges and alerts when you unlock another achievement. For a long time I posted with no account at all, but that got too annoying. Thus "none". I'd rather get rid of it all. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 4:22

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