TY - JOUR
T1 - Gender Ambiguous, not Genderless
T2 - Designing Gender in Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) with Sensitivity
AU - Sutton, Selina Jeanne
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ACM.
PY - 2020/7/22
Y1 - 2020/7/22
N2 - In 2019, UNESCO's report [36] highlighting sexism, and the release of 'Q The genderless voice'[38] 1, triggered a waking-up to issues of gender in voice assistants. However, there is a danger that their coincidental timing implies that the latter is the solution to the former; that a voice assistant with a genderless voice cannot be sexist. This paper outlines how gender is not inherent in voice - listeners assign gender to voice. Also, this paper highlights that gender is constructed through a multitude of resources. Thus, a genderless voice is redundant if other elements of the voice assistant's design cause it to be gendered. I posit two take-homes; i) a change of terminology to gender ambiguous will help reframe how we think about gender in voice assistants, and ii) that we should critically engage with all potentially gendering elements in the design of voice assistants, not just the voice, in order to consider gender in a more sensitive manner.
AB - In 2019, UNESCO's report [36] highlighting sexism, and the release of 'Q The genderless voice'[38] 1, triggered a waking-up to issues of gender in voice assistants. However, there is a danger that their coincidental timing implies that the latter is the solution to the former; that a voice assistant with a genderless voice cannot be sexist. This paper outlines how gender is not inherent in voice - listeners assign gender to voice. Also, this paper highlights that gender is constructed through a multitude of resources. Thus, a genderless voice is redundant if other elements of the voice assistant's design cause it to be gendered. I posit two take-homes; i) a change of terminology to gender ambiguous will help reframe how we think about gender in voice assistants, and ii) that we should critically engage with all potentially gendering elements in the design of voice assistants, not just the voice, in order to consider gender in a more sensitive manner.
KW - Design
KW - Gender
KW - Voice Assistants
KW - Voice User Interfaces
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090155255&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3405755.3406123
DO - 10.1145/3405755.3406123
M3 - Conference article
SP - 1
EP - 8
JO - Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
JF - Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
M1 - 11
ER -