Siri and Cortana Sound Like Ladies Because of Sexism
Jessi Hempel of Wired wonders why so many computer applications use female voices.
The world is about to start sounding even more feminine, as voice systems pop up in things that are not phones and prove to be a more effective interface than keyboards. Siri is an integral element to navigating the newly announced Apple TV. The Nest smoke detector interacts with users via a female voice. We prize gender diversity in plenty of other areas; why does most of our tech sound so female?
…people tend to perceive female voices as helping us solve our problems by ourselves, while they view male voices as authority figures who tell us the answers to our problems. We want our technology to help us, but we want to be the bosses of it, so we are more likely to opt for a female interface.
