> identity politics are the primary driver of motivation in the developer team

There almost certainly is someone in the development team for whom this is important, given the reports that identical patches would be accepted after being "laundered" through a male dev. People will go a long way to defend their biases. For example, I expect this entire discussion to be flagged off the front two pages of HN and into oblivion fairly quickly.

> meaningful study

mjg59's reply: "Remember kids: never share your lived experiences without presenting your experimental design first".