To address @jwidness’s original question, one suggestion made by many others above is that iNaturalist is a demographic reflection of the photographic/scientific/natural history/citizen science sub-communities. How do we know? For a satisfying answer we need data that we probably don’t have. I think we might want to ask ourselves if we want to be a reflection of those groups, in terms of their demographic composition; or, are there ways in which we want to diversify?
Also a good point by @schoenitz that there are many influential women in the community, even if they are not in the top of the observer and identifier leaderboards. We’ve never found a good way, for example, to identify the “evangelists” who are recruiting a lot of people to iNaturalist.
At this point, iNaturalist is the scale of a small city, and I think a lot of city-like analogies become relevant. We’ve got virtual “neighborhoods” of people who interact more with each other based on geographic, taxonomic, or other interests, and the demographics of those “neighborhoods” vary too. Are all of those neighborhoods inclusive and supportive, in this particular case specifically for non-men? If they aren’t, then we should a) find out why and b) work to make them that way.
At this scale, iNaturalist is also influenced by many, many cultures and the systemic sexism (and other systemic -isms) within each that contribute to emergent global patterns. We can, should, and do try to make iNaturalist accessible to as many people as possible (after all, biodiversity is pretty much everywhere and everyone has personal experiences with wild biodiversity of some kind), but there’s always more to be done.
@jwidness, given the potentially expansive reach of this topic, do you want to refine or elaborate on your original question?