  Listing people alphabetically on an electronic output device is a traditional
technique, since alphabetical order is easily perceived by users and
facilitates access to information. However, this apparently harmless technique,
especially when the list is ordered by first name, needs to be used with
caution by designers and programmers. We show, via empirical data analysis,
that when an interface displays people's first name in alphabetical order in
several pages/screens, each page/screen may have imbalances in respect to
gender of its Top-k individuals.k represents the size of the list of names
visualized first, which may be the number of names that fits in a screen page
of a certain device.The research work was carried out with the analysis of
actual datasets of names of five different countries. Each dataset has a person
name and the frequency of adoption of the name in the country.Our analysis
shows that, even though all countries have exhibit imbalance problems, the
samples of individuals with Brazilian and Spanish first names are more prone to
gender imbalance among their Top-k individuals. These results can be useful for
designers and engineers to construct information systems that avoid gender bias
induction.
