> the fact that it's true is, itself, a confirmation that (a) institutional sexism exists in our programmer culture
This has nothing to do with the software industry and it has nothing to do with female engineers. It's an "Internet advertising" thing. If you put a picture of a hot girl in your ad, it automatically looks like porn/scam/spam simply because that's what porn/scam/spam advertisers do.
If they were advertising for fashion models would the ads have been rejected? What exactly are these folks at LinkedIn being paid for if not to distinguish spam from legitimate ads?
(Side point - Toptal has 8 dudes and zero ladies on their home page; not exactly a company dedicated to eliminating institutional sexism, AFAICT.)
This has nothing to do with the software industry and it has nothing to do with female engineers. It's an "Internet advertising" thing. If you put a picture of a hot girl in your ad, it automatically looks like porn/scam/spam simply because that's what porn/scam/spam advertisers do.