When ThoughtLeaders Chief Operating Officer Shoshana Eilon noticed women creators were virtually absent from YouTube’s year-end rankings, she launched an investigation that revealed systematic barriers preventing women from reaching the platform’s highest levels of success despite its reputation for equal opportunity.

Revealing YouTube’s Gender Statistics

Shoshana’s expertise in digital equality stems from her diverse media background. 

“I studied Film at university and worked at several UK production companies and international film festivals before I got a job working specifically in documentaries, on the distribution side,” she explains. “I helped films find an audience after they were made. I was involved in some amazing releases and am so grateful for that experience.”

Her shift to digital media emerged from professional curiosity. 

“I began to get curious about the new forms of entertainment that were emerging in the digital space, and that pushed me to find a job in the creator economy, and I ended up working with ThoughtLeaders,” she adds.

The startling reality of YouTube’s gender imbalance became apparent to Shoshana during her industry analysis. 

“I was listening to some end-of-year round-ups that picked the top 10 creators or videos that had stood out on YouTube that year,” she recalls, “I suddenly realized that women were almost completely absent from those lists. At best, one or two female creators might be mentioned.”

The lack of discussion around this disparity caught Shoshana’s attention. “I was mainly surprised to find so few people discussing this gender gap,” she says. “I’ve seen so much coverage of other issues within the creator economy, such as creator burnout, AI plagiarism, or toxic fan communities, and so little attention paid to this glaring inequality at the heart of YouTube.”

Her role at ThoughtLeaders provided access to crucial data. “Since we are ‘data junkies’ here at ThoughtLeaders, it was very important for me to ensure that our research was grounded in data,” she explains. “It was also useful for me to compare some of the wider industry statistics with our internal figures.”

This analysis revealed widespread industry participation in the problem: “When we are exploring the pay gap, I could look at a study released by a prominent influencer marketing platform and compare those numbers with the breakdown of how much we at ThoughtLeaders had paid to various creators over the years. That helped me to understand that we are all unwittingly ‘part of the problem.'”

The gender disparity appears more pronounced on YouTube compared to other social platforms. 

“I think that our society is more comfortable with seeing women as ‘influencers’ in the most narrow sense of that term – i.e., personalities who build an audience through static or short-form content that shows off their enviable looks and aspirational lifestyles,” Shoshana observes.

She identifies YouTube’s unique characteristics as contributing factors: “On YouTube, with its focus on long-form content, there is a certain snobbery that has emerged where broadly speaking we have developed a greater respect for self-declared ‘content creators’ rather than ‘influencers.’ The algorithm has done a lot to drive this (trying to promote longer watch times on the platform).”

Four Key Barriers to Success

Through methodical research, Shoshana identified four primary factors that maintain this disparity. 

The culprits she identified – the gender credibility gap, the gender pay gap, trolling, and YouTube’s algorithm – form an interconnected web that disadvantages female creators. 

“It made it a bit more fun but also allowed us to structure the show in a way where we dealt with each of these issues individually whilst also showing how they interacted and fed off each other to create an environment more hostile to female creators,” Shoshana says.

The role of YouTube’s algorithm emerged as particularly problematic during her research. “This wasn’t something I was expecting to address in the podcast, honestly!” she reveals. 

“I knew there was some gross anti-women content out there, but it was only when we read studies about just how prevalent these kinds of videos were on the platform that we realized that this is an ongoing problem that helps to shape the YouTube experience for millions of viewers on the platform,” she adds.

The investigation revealed that addressing these issues requires platform-level changes and industry awareness. 

“I think YouTube has been slow to address this issue because no one has forced them to, which brings us to the question of government regulation of a way of forcing the platform to make changes that might not be immediately financially beneficial,” Shoshana notes.

For female creators, the combined impact of these four factors creates a challenging environment for sustained success. 

“Unfortunately, there is not enough data available on this for us to have concrete examples,” Shoshana explains. “YouTube pays out different RPMs for different content types, but they are not very forthright about which content categories they value most highly.” 

Even more concerning is the broader cultural impact, with Shoshana stressing that YouTube hasn’t admitted that it has a problem in this regard. 

“We see that from the lackluster response to the trolling many female creators have to deal with on the platform,” she notes. “The debate around gender parity representation has been much healthier in other media, and I believe that that has driven much of the progress we have seen.”

The systemic nature of these issues means that even well-intentioned companies can inadvertently perpetuate the problem. Drawing from ThoughtLeaders’ own experience, Shoshana notes that “of course, no one at our company has tried in any way to ‘sabotage’ female creators or ensure they are paid less, but the gender gap is so systemic that it is something we have all been contributing to without even being aware of it.” 

This realization drove home the importance of systematically addressing each “culprit” rather than treating them as isolated issues.

The Challenge of Platform Growth Strategies

Shoshana’s research highlighted what she terms “The MrBeast Effect,” which is “essentially the phenomenon we’ve seen over the past few years whereby thousands of creators are watching MrBeast‘s success on the platform and emulating (or, more accurately, copying) everything he does, from the style of his thumbnails to the content of his videos.”

This creates specific barriers for women creators. 

“MrBeast is known as someone who obsessively studies the algorithm, and because of his enormous success on the platform, he is now in a place where the algorithm is studying him and promoting content that looks and smells like classic MrBeast content,” Shoshana explains. 

“The issue that I raise in the podcast is that MrBeast’s content is incredibly ‘male,’ with a lot of emphasis on extreme physical challenges and a male-dominated crew of collaborators. This makes it almost impossible for female creators to follow his playbook,” she adds.

The monetary implications extend throughout YouTube’s ecosystem. 

“There are various kinds of monetization,” Shoshana points out. “The revenues paid out directly by YouTube are governed by views. That means that if we fix the algorithm to ensure that the views received by female creators don’t lag so far behind those of male creators, we will have gone a long way towards addressing this problem.”

Shoshana notes that success in brand partnerships “relies on giving female creators more confidence with which to negotiate and more data to allow them to know their worth.”

Moreover, the human impact resonates throughout the creator community. 

“I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be to have to wade through negative, sexual comments just to upload new content,” Shoshana reflects. “We shared several examples of female creators who quit the platform for this reason.” 

“I can understand the frustration and heartbreak that must have gone into that decision, particularly because, in some ways, leaving the platform means ‘letting the trolls win,'” she explains.

A Call for Industry Transformation

“The big message I am trying to present here is ‘Why should this new emerging form of entertainment be so old fashioned? Can’t we do better?'” Shoshana challenges. 

“I want people to clearly understand that the upper echelon of this exciting new industry is almost entirely male-dominated – and then we can have an open conversation about what that says about us as a society and how we can collectively challenge the current status quo.”