Come explore with me the love of tech; but instead of commitment issues and cosmos, I’m navigating lightning ports, camera bumps, and the occasional existential crisis over bezels.

Hey siri, am I sexist? 

The other day, I came to a horrifying realization: every virtual assistant that I use has a woman’s voice as default. Siri? Alexa? Google Assistant? ChatGPT? Gemini? All, soft, friendly female voices eager to help and never argue. 

And… I couldn’t help but wonder:* 

Is it sexist that all our AI assistants have a female voice? Is this what our society expects an assistant to be: female? 

* Another Sex and the City reference - I’m TV/film buff after all.

The default culture norm

Is it really random? Why is the voice in my HomePods, the voice coming out of my ChatGPT app when I want to ask a random question late at night, the one guiding my Gemini subscription, female? 

Maybe because, somewhere deep down, we still associate service with femininity. Think about it: If I asked you to picture a secretary, a PA, a receptionist, what gender pops into your mind? Probably female right? 

She is the helpful, polite person we’ve all been conditioned to expect in positions of service. Even the automated voice telling you to “press one for more options,” still female.

But it’s not tech companies fault

It’s not like  tech companies explicitly said: let’s make our digital servant a woman. But they probably did ask: what voice, or gender role do people respond to better when thinking of an assistant? 

And then I found this: A 2019 UNESCO report titled “I’d Blush If I Could”. A report that says the majority of AI assistants were designed with female voices because users found them “more welcoming and trustworthy.” The report argued this reinforces harmful gender stereotypes — portraying women as “obedient and docile helpers.”

A Stanford University study found that both men and women tend to associate female voices with warmth and male voices with authority. Which could also mean that maybe, just maybe, we are preconditioned to like women to assist us, not lead us. 

Fun fact: 

Even Theranos’ CEO, Elizabeth Holmes (this isn’t about the scam) famously deepened her voice to sound more authoritative in boardrooms. This alone says everything about how we still equate confidence with masculinity, and assistance with femininity. Or am I reading too much into it?

This raises a deeper question

I mean, yes, you can switch your assistant’s voice to male but it’s never the default. When we expect female voices to serve, can we have female professionals to lead? Aren’t we just coding the same workplace bias into devices? 

It’s the natural way forward for artificial intelligence. Because, it turns out, that’s what makes us feel more familiar. You wouldn’t feel comfortable ordering a deep, commanding male voice. Would you? 

In offices, assertive women are often labelled as “bossy,” or worse. We expect women colleagues to be polite and bubbly but never commanding. Tech companies, in trying to make their services more familiar, are (subtly and unconsciously) reinforcing the same toxic bias that are keeping women from being seen, or heard, as equals. 

And it really begs the question: who is really being programmed here, the voice assistants, or us?