Thoughts, anyone?
Viewer statistics from YouTube (Large pictures)

How does it know the gender of the viewers?
Not all viewers are counted toward that statistic. It can only survey viewers who are signed-in to their youtube accounts through google+ (unless youtube asks for your gender when signing up... I don't remember if it does.).
I am not sure about other channels, but here are a few screenshots telling of who is watching my channel. I'd be interested to see what are the demographics on more well-known and established channels.
Chess has a promising future because of young people. The majority of the viewers that have come across my channel are young people. The number of females and proportion of females is concerning though. I didn't think the proportion would be barely above 2%
Here are a few screenshots that caught my eye or are just a summary of who watches what on the channel.