Do you really think people are finding articles that they enjoy but checking gender before they click follow? That seems like a bit of a stretch.

Medium isn't a meritocracy. The most popular writers aren't necessarily the best, they're the ones who are the most well-known or who started writing here earliest.

There are people on here who could write out their shopping list and get 1k+ claps, and others who are writing really great stuff for 200.

It's not that I disagree that women's opinions aren't valued highly enough in general, but pointing to follower counts on Medium is like saying sexism is over because Kim Kardashian has more Twitter followers than Bernie Sanders.