# For the Underrepresented in Gender Bias Research: Chinese Name Gender Prediction with Heterogeneous Graph Attention Network

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.00419 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00419/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Feb 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Heterogeneous Graph Attention Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07293/) (2019)
- [A General Framework for Implicit and Explicit Debiasing of Distributional Word Vector Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06092/) (2019)
- [Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04103/) (2019)
- [What's in a Name? -- Gender Classification of Names with Character Based Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.03692/) (2021)
- [A Causal Inference Method for Reducing Gender Bias in Word Embedding Relations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10787/) (2019)
- [Radical-Enhanced Chinese Character Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1404.4714/) (2014)
- [Gender and Racial Stereotype Detection in Legal Opinion Word Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13369/) (2022)
- [Advance gender prediction tool of first names and its use in analysing gender disparity in Computer Science in the UK, Malaysia and China](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05769/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [For the Misgendered Chinese in Gender Bias Research: Multi-Task Learning with Knowledge Distillation for Pinyin Name-Gender Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06221/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Achieving gender equality is an important pillar for humankind's sustainable future. Pioneering data-driven gender bias research is based on large-scale public records such as scientific papers, patents, and company registrations, covering female researchers, inventors and entrepreneurs, and so on. Since gender information is often missing in relevant datasets, studies rely on tools to infer genders from names. However, available open-sourced Chinese gender-guessing tools are not yet suitable for scientific purposes, which may be partially responsible for female Chinese being underrepresented in mainstream gender bias research and affect their universality. Specifically, these tools focus on character-level information while overlooking the fact that the combinations of Chinese characters in multi-character names, as well as the components and pronunciations of characters, convey important messages. As a first effort, we design a Chinese Heterogeneous Graph Attention (CHGAT) model to capture the heterogeneity in component relationships and incorporate the pronunciations of characters. Our model largely surpasses current tools and also outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithm. Last but not least, the most popular Chinese name-gender dataset is single-character based with far less female coverage from an unreliable source, naturally hindering relevant studies. We open-source a more balanced multi-character dataset from an official source together with our code, hoping to help future research promoting gender equality.