A new study shows computer code written by women gets better ratings than men but only if the gender of the coder is a secret. The research included various issues including the programming language used and the length of the coding, but they could not find a link between such factors and their findings. in addition, the acceptance rate was much lower when the coder's profile clearly showed the programmer's sex was female, which seems to show gender bias in the coding community.

The study was conducted by the computer science departments at California Polytechnic State University and North Carolina State University. It evaluated about 1.4 million users who logged into the open-source coding website GitHub on April 1, 2015.

GitHub is a large developer community that has 12 million users. It does not request gender information from them, according to BBC.  

The researchers used a few different methods to learn the users' gender. They either reviewed their profile or linked their email addresses to social network profiles, according to Tech Times.

The researchers admitted that this process could create a privacy risk. However, they have no plans to publish the raw data from their research of GitHub users.

Women's acceptance rates were 71.8 when they used gender-neutral profiles, but that figure dropped to 62.5 percent when their gender was not clandestine. The decrease was about the same for men, but the effect was weaker.

Data was based on the number of "pull requests" made on the site, according to BBC. Those are suggested code changes.

Other experts are evaluating the study through the process of peer review to determine if the findings are valid.

The tech world is still dealing with various diversity issues including sexism. Last year major tech companies released yearly information on the racial and gender make-up of their workers.

These diversity reports showed various figures such as the percentage of women in leadership jobs. They included tech giants Google (22 percent), Apple (28 percent), Facebook (23 percent), Twitter (22 percent), and Microsoft (17 percent).    

However, computer scientist Dr. Sue Black told the BBC that the study's findings are positive. She also noted that the idea of software was from a woman named Ada Lovelace.  

Here's an AT&T diversity program: