There’s a new trend playing out on LinkedIn: women are changing their gender setting to “man” and suddenly seeing a jump in engagement on their posts. It sounds absurd, but it’s happening. And for anyone wondering, yes, I’m still a woman.

Women are changing their gender setting to “man”. Credit: Dionne Gain

Just last week, over dinner, my girlfriends and I were laughing as we scanned through numerous posts by women with photos of themselves with a moustache, announcing “today I came out as a man” because those posts mysteriously performed better.

It’s now known as “the bro boost”. Change your setting to man, and like magic, the algorithm plays nicer. Some are even getting ChatGPT to rewrite old posts in a more agentic, traditionally masculine tone before reposting them and watching the impressions climb. But while most have jumped on the bandwagon, I refuse to. I’m not having a sex change just to fit in with an algorithm that a man most likely coded.

The suppression of women’s voices is nothing........

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