dropdown - Default gender, "Male" or "Female"

Should our default gender when selecting male/female on the dropdown list be based on the local sex ratio (if a country have more female than male then female is the default value)?

Answer

You don't select a default at all

Using a drop down list or a radio group - you let the user decide - and this also prevents accidental submission of a form without the user setting this value (assuming it's gets validated) because there is no other way of validating it - only the user knows their gender so there is no right/wrong validation other than 'is it set'

Here are examples from Windows Live ID sign-up, Facebook sign-up, Yahoo sign-up

In fact in my own survey of over 100 high profile sign-up forms:

Only 20% of those sites asked the gender of which:

• 20 did not pre-select - by using one of the options above.


• 2 forms prefilled with the option 'Female' (bebo and foursquare)



• 0 forms prefilled with 'Male'

Furthermore - of the 20 that did not pre-select:

• 2 sites - TypePad and Etsy, gave options to not provide gender via a third option:

Grooveshark go the extra mile (although I'd at least expect consistency)

• to try and make it clearer by using symbols on their sign up:

• or in their 'edit profile' they use another version in which the wording has clearly been carefully considered and accounts for the gender/sex issue as to how the user identifies themselves: