Pulling a Mulan on LinkedIn
Women on LinkedIn are quietly running a visibility test: Sound more masculine, get seen more. Mental health professional Megan Cornish helped ignite the trend after using ChatGPT to rewrite her profile with more “male-coded” language. Within a week, her impressions reportedly quadrupled. Same credentials, same ideas, but with words like 'driving' and 'scaling' replacing softer descriptors.
Her post went viral, opening the floodgates. Other women followed suit, removing pronouns, changing tone, and in some cases even altering gender markers. Many saw their reach jump almost instantly.
What the Algorithm Says vs. What Users See
LinkedIn insists its algorithm doesn’t use gender or other demographic data to determine visibility. But experts note that algorithms learn from engagement. If audiences consistently interact more with posts that sound authoritative in traditionally masculine ways, the system will naturally amplify that language.
In short, the bias may not be explicitly coded, but it can still be reinforced through behavior.
The Catch No One Can Ignore
Not everyone got the same results. Some women saw no change at all. Others, particularly women of color, reported worse performance when running similar experiments. The takeaway: Visibility isn’t one-size-fits-all. Gender intersects with race, industry, audience, and network size in ways the algorithm doesn’t neatly explain.
The Real Power Move
This isn’t about telling women to write like men. It’s about understanding how professional authority is still coded, testing the system strategically, and deciding when to play along and when not to. On a platform that shapes careers, reach isn’t a nice-to-have.
