Women’s Voices: Shrill or Obliging, but Nothing in Between

Image Source

Shrill. Screech. Cackle. Nasal. High Pitched. How did we come to describe women’s voices like this? Here’s how:

Early broadcast technology was designed only for the male voice.

So much so that if women spoke into it, the sounds were distorted, making women’s voices sound thin and scrambled. A professor of Comp Lit at UC Berkeley says that this is the root cause behind why many, including women, find women’s voices annoying. This is yet another story about an engineering bias that created a negative association which caused a further ongoing prejudice against women. Even after the tech was fixed, the belittling association and bias continues. After all, the “Clinton Cackle” became a thing for a reason, right?

But here’s the thing: we don’t always find women’s voices annoying.

Alexa and Siri are in our homes, talking to us in women’s voices all the time. It’s only when women are speaking “in authority,” we repulse. Alexa and Siri are submissive, obedient, obliging—speaking to us as our assistants—and we don’t think twice about this choice.

Design Considersations

How might we be further deepening an established stereotype…

  • In our communications? I recently saw an advert for a truck. It showed a man driving it out in the woods, but then changed to a woman to showcase the automated parallel parking features. It’s so subtle, most people probably don't notice the gender stereotyping!

  • Through our product defaults? What led to so many voice assistants being female, and what could checking our defaults have changed?

  • By overlooking consequences that matter to women more? Voice recognition technologies have been known to let sexist comments slide, or been unable to respond to words that affect women more, such as harassment.


The Unconforming Series

This issue is part of the Unconforming newsletter series: our biweekly newsletter on gender-lens design. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Previous
Previous

5 Learnings from our Gender Practitioners

Next
Next

Manmade: Can Women Trust Science?