"Alexa, are you female?"
gender and technology in the case of digital assistants
Abstract
The article analyzes gender and digital technologies from digital assistants: Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant. Exclusively or by default, assistants have female voices and personalities and perform tasks historically associated with a sexual division of labor and care. From empirical data obtained from quantitative form (n = 501) and in-depth interviews (n = 14) with users of these technologies, we analyzed their perceptions and preferences concerning gender and voice of the digital assistants used. The analysis points to the predominance of the preference for female voices, which are justified based on five elements: 1) habituation; 2) identification; 3) feelings associated with the voice; 4) characteristics perceived in the voice and 5) relationship between gender, machine and power.
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