Categorization via gender is omnipresent throughout society, and thus also computing; gender identity is often requested of users before they use software or web services. Despite this fact, no research has explored how software developers approach requesting gender disclosure from users. To understand how developers think about gender in software, we present an interview study with 15 software developers recruited from the freelancing platform Upwork as well as Twitter. We also collected and categorized 917 threads that contained keywords relevant to gender from programming-related sub-forums on the social media service Reddit. 16 posts that discussed approaches to gender disclosure were further analyzed. We found that while some developers have an understanding of inclusive gender options, programmers rarely consider when gender data is necessary or the way in which they request gender disclosure from users. Our findings have implications for programmers, software engineering educators, and the broader community concerned with inclusivity.

翻译：性别分类在社会中无处不在，也因此渗透到计算领域；用户在使用软件或网络服务前，常被要求提供性别信息。然而，尚无研究探讨软件开发人员如何设计性别披露的请求方式。为了解开发者在软件中思考性别的方式，我们开展了一项访谈研究，从自由职业平台Upwork及Twitter招募了15名软件开发者。同时，我们从社交媒体服务Reddit上与编程相关的子论坛中收集并分类了917个包含性别相关关键词的主题帖，并进一步分析了其中16个讨论性别披露方法的帖子。研究发现，尽管部分开发者对包容性性别选项有所了解，但程序员极少考虑何时需要收集性别数据，或如何以恰当方式向用户请求性别披露。这一发现对程序员、软件工程教育者以及关注包容性的广泛社群具有启示意义。