<p><pre><code>    We considered a GitHub profile as gender neutral if all of the following conditions were met:
    - an identicon (rather than a profile image) was used,
    - the gender inference tool output a ’unknown’ for the user’s login name and display name, and
    - none of the panelists indicated that they could identify the user’s gender.
    Across both panels, panelists inspected 3000 profiles of roughly equal numbers of women and men.
</code></pre>
Given that acceptance rates dropped for both men and women when this method determined that a user was not gender-neutral, I wonder if use of a profile picture or real name is the real killer here. Perhaps the kind of person to include identifying information in their Github profile is less likely to have good pull requests? More likely, perhaps having any identifying information at all gives people an excuse to reject your pull requests? That would explain why there was a drop for both sexes but a slightly stronger one for women. If you are identifiable from your profile image or name, people are more likely to reject your PR on the bases of your ethnicity, appearance, religion, or gender, with gender being only a part of the effect.