Topic
Do women just pick lower-traffic topics?
No. In a Gelbach decomposition of the 19 percent gap, content category's share is minus 22.9 percent, widening the gap.
Comparing channels within the same 40 content categories the gap is about 20 percent, versus about 19 percent without category. Women’s categories average fewer views, but the gap remains significant within finer subtopics. Women’s channels still receive more positive and less profane comments within subtopics.
Output
Do women post fewer videos?
Partly. In a Gelbach decomposition of the raw 34 percent gap, channel age and video count account for 56.4 percent.
Women post fewer videos on average (834 versus 1,495), but the difference is not significant at the .05 level; the difference in logged videos per year of channel age is significant (p < .0001). At the same age, video count, and category, women’s channels still receive about 20 percent fewer views.
Titles and descriptions
Is it how women title and describe their videos?
No. Creator content accounts for minus 7.3 percent of the 20 percent gap in a Gelbach decomposition, widening it.
Women’s titles and descriptions are more positive, but this does not close the gap.
Transcripts
Is it what women say in their videos?
No. Including transcripts with titles and descriptions accounts for minus 9.7 percent of the raw 34 percent gap and minus 18.2 percent of the gap at the same channel age and video count in a Gelbach decomposition, widening the gap.
Women’s spoken content is more positive. Transcript missingness is not significantly different by gender.
Thumbnails
Is it how women package their videos?
No. None of the content elements accounts for the gap in models including all creator content and comment reception.
Women’s thumbnails show more positive facial expressions, warmer colors, and less clickbait.
Subscribers
Do audiences subscribe to women less?
No. Controlling for channel age and video count reduces the difference to 0.6 percent, not statistically distinguishable from zero.
Without controls, women’s channels have about 10 percent fewer subscribers.
Engagement
Do audiences engage less with women’s channels?
No. At the same channel age and video count, engagement per view is 24.7 percent higher and engagement per subscriber is 14.2 percent higher on women’s channels, both significant at the .05 level.
Women’s channels also receive more comments.
Who comments
Is it just male commenters?
No. Male-coded and female-coded commenters write 10.0 and 9.8 tone points more positively, respectively, and use less profanity on women’s channels, both significant at the .05 level.
Holding the share of female-coded commenters equal leaves a significant gap; the gap becomes not distinguishable from zero only when comment tone and profanity are included.
Self-promotion
Do women promote themselves less on other platforms?
No. Women’s channels link out more often (20.7 percent versus 16.4 percent, significant at the .05 level).
Holding linking equal leaves the gap unchanged, and linking’s association with views does not differ by gender.
Backlash
Are women penalized differently in female-typed categories?
No. The three-way interaction of gender, comment tone, and female-typed category is -0.04 and not statistically distinguishable from zero (p = .61).
The link between positive tone and fewer views is steeper in female-typed categories for both genders.
The 20 percent visibility gap and its association with comment tone and profanity hold under robustness checks including content-category clustered standard errors and wild cluster bootstrap, trimming extreme views, restricting to channels active at least twelve months, varying minimum comment floors from 20 to 500 per channel, weighting by comment count, holding like rate equal, and quantile regressions at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of views.
