Study of 200 YouTube tutorials finds male bias in software engineering education

A new study published on arXiv titled "A Critical Discourse Analysis of Gender Representation in Software Engineering Education Videos on YouTube" reveals persistent gender biases in online learning content. Researchers Isabella Graßl, Alexander Serebrenik, and Giuseppe Destefanis manually analyzed 200 English and German software engineering tutorials on YouTube, examining contextual domains and linguistic identity markers. The findings show that male characters and masculine linguistic defaults overwhelmingly dominate the tutorials, with technical and decision-making roles—such as coding, debugging, and architecture design—almost exclusively assigned to male actors.

Female actors, when present, were often relegated to passive, low-agency roles or entirely absent. The researchers identified an "agency gap" where women are rarely depicted as active problem-solvers or leaders in software engineering contexts. This pattern suggests that online educational content may reproduce gendered norms, acting as a form of "symbolic gatekeeping" that discourages women from pursuing careers in software engineering. The study, presented at CSE&ET 2026, highlights how the hidden curriculum in YouTube tutorials can shape perceptions of who belongs in tech, potentially perpetuating the existing gender gap.