What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 

Your task concerns the first listed appellant. The nature of this litigant falls into the category "natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)". Your task is to determine the gender of this litigant. Use names to classify the party's sex only if there is little ambiguity (e.g., the sex of "Chris" should be coded as "not ascertained").

Opinion:
Otis C. TOLBERT, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Elliott LEIGHTON, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 78-1038.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
May 29, 1980.
Otis C. Tolbert, in pro per.
Elliott Leighton, in pro per.
Before ELY, TRASK and CHOY, Circuit Judges.
CHOY, Circuit Judge:
The district court, finding that Tolbert had failed to prosecute his legal malpractice suit, dismissed the action with prejudice. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 41(b). We reverse.
Tolbert’s only offense was failing to appear at a status conference set for a date less than seven months after the complaint was filed. The record indicates that Leigh-ton and his attorney did not appear at the conference either. (Indeed, they apparently have not participated in the case in any way either in the district court or here.)
Sua sponte dismissals for failure to prosecute will be affirmed unless the district court abused its discretion. Link v. Wabash R.R., 370 U.S. 626, 633, 82 S.Ct. 1386, 1390, 8 L.Ed.2d 734 (1962). In Link, the Supreme Court upheld such a dismissal for failure to attend a pretrial conference in a case already six years old, where there was evidence that the plaintiff “had been deliberately proceeding in dilatory fashion.” Id. But the Court made clear that it was not deciding “whether unexplained absence from a pretrial conference would alone justify a dismissal with prejudice if the record showed no other evidence of dilatoriness on the part of the plaintiff.” Id. at 634, 82 S.Ct. at 1391.
The question that Link reserved is before us today. Other courts of appeals have held that such an absence, alone, does not justify the drastic sanction of dismissal. Moreno v. Collins, 362 F.2d 176 (7th Cir. 1966) (counsel missed status call three months after complaint filed); Meeker v. Rizley, 324 F.2d 269 (10th Cir. 1963) (out-of-state plaintiff, pro se, missed pretrial conference three months after complaint filed); accord, Flaksa v. Little River Marine Construction Co., 389 F.2d 885 (5th Cir.) (counsel twice failed to appear at or send prepared substitute to pretrial conferences, and was guilty of other delay, in case less than a year old; dismissal was abuse of discretion), cert. denied, 392 U.S. 928, 88 S.Ct. 2287, 20 L.Ed.2d 1387 (1968).
We agree that it is an abuse of discretion to dismiss a plaintiff’s case for failure to prosecute where (1) the only evidence of dilatoriness is his or his attorney’s failure to attend a pretrial conference; (2) the court has not warned that failure to attend will create a risk of dismissal; and (3) the case is still “young.”
Especially where one or more of these factors is present, before dismissing a case a district court must consider some of the less drastic alternative sanctions at its disposal. Anderson v. Air West, Inc., 542 F.2d 522, 525-26 (9th Cir. 1976); Von Poppenheim v. Portland Boxing & Wrestling Comm’n, 442 F.2d 1047, 1053-54 (9th Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 1039, 92 S.Ct. 715, 30 L.Ed.2d 731 (1972); see Industrial Building Materials, Inc. v. Interchemical Corp., 437 F.2d 1336, 1339 (9th Cir. 1970). There is no indication that the district court here did so; necessarily, then, the court failed to exercise any discretion in choosing among the alternatives.
Nothing in this opinion should deter district courts from entering orders of dismissal if, after weighing the applicable law and policies, the facts of the case, and the alternatives to dismissal, they determine in the exercise of their sound discretion that dismissal is warranted. See generally United States v. Sumitomo Marine & Fire Insurance Co., 617 F.2d 1365 (9th Cir. 1980) (preclusion order, equivalent to dismissal, entered under Fed.R.Civ.P. 37(b) for violation of discovery orders); Citizens Utilities Co. v. AT&T, 595 F.2d 1171 (9th Cir.) (dismissal under Fed.R.Civ.P. 41(b)), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 931, 100 S.Ct. 273, 62 L.Ed.2d 188 (1979). Under the present case’s circumstances, however, dismissal for failure to prosecute was an abuse of discretion.
REVERSED.

Question: This question concerns the first listed appellant. The nature of this litigant falls into the category "natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)". What is the gender of this litigant?Use names to classify the party's sex only if there is little ambiguity.

Choices:
not ascertained
male - indication in opinion (e.g., use of masculine pronoun)
male - assumed because of name
female - indication in opinion of gender
female - assumed because of name

Answer: 1