Title: Expressions of Sentiments During Code Reviews: Male vs. Female,
Abstract: Background: As most of the software development organizations are
male-dominated, female developers encountering various negative workplace
experiences reported feeling like they "do not belong". Exposures to
discriminatory expletives or negative critiques from their male colleagues may
further exacerbate those feelings. Aims: The primary goal of this study is to
identify the differences in expressions of sentiments between male and female
developers during various software engineering tasks. Method: On this goal, we
mined the code review repositories of six popular open source projects. We used
a semi-automated approach leveraging the name as well as multiple social
networks to identify the gender of a developer. Using SentiSE, a customized and
state-of-the-art sentiment analysis tool for the software engineering domain,
we classify each communication as negative, positive, or neutral. We also
compute the frequencies of sentiment words, emoticons, and expletives used by
each developer. Results: Our results suggest that the likelihood of using
sentiment words, emoticons, and expletives during code reviews varies based on
the gender of a developer, as females are significantly less likely to express
sentiments than males. Although female developers were more neutral to their
male colleagues than to another female, male developers from three out of the
six projects were not only writing more frequent negative comments but also
withholding positive encouragements from their female counterparts. Conclusion:
Our results provide empirical evidence of another factor behind the negative
work place experiences encountered by the female developers that may be
contributing to the diminishing number of females in the SE industry.