Featured Image Credit: Getty stock image
Topics: Apple, Technology
Mia Williams
Have you ever noticed that nearly all automated voices are female?
The number of times we hear automated voices in a day is ever-increasing.
From Sat Navs and Alexa, to lifts and Siri - we hear them all the time.
But have you ever realised that they are nearly all female?
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On the surface level, this doesn't strike you as a problem.
But when you look deeper into how we use virtual assistants, and specifically the way we speak to them - it could be a cause for concern.
The job of a visual assistant is to take orders, and do exactly what we tell them to do.
But when this is constantly represented by a woman's voice, problems could arise.
Some gender equality experts have suggested that they promote gender stereotypes and encourage users to treat women as subservient.
Speaking out in a statement, Saniye Gülser Corat, director of gender equality at UNESCO, said: "Obedient and obliging machines that pretend to be women are entering our homes, cars and offices.
"Their hardwired subservience influences how people speak to female voices and models how women respond to requests and express themselves."
However, tech companies have defended their decision to use female voices, explaining that it is driven by a market that trusts and prefers women.
A Microsoft spokeswoman previously told the Wall Street Journal: "For our objectives—building a helpful, supportive, trustworthy assistant—a female voice was the stronger choice."
Stanford University Professor, Clifford Nass, noted that there is actually a much more simple explanation as to why female voices are preferred.
He said: "It’s much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes.
"It’s a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices."
While Apple's assistant, Siri, largely has a male voice around the UK, it was originally released with a female voice - and this is still the case in a lot of countries, including the US.
However, Apple have stated that Siri does not have a gender, and users have access to multiple voices which they can choose for the assistant.
Another commonly known female assistant is Alexa.
Sat Navs are also almost always voiced by a woman.
However, a number of BMW's were recalled in Germany in the late 1990s, as drivers refused to take instructions and directions from a woman.