Digital assistants are a common feature of our lives. They answer questions, direct phone calls, and help with driving directions. They are often created as quasi-human, with voices, names and identities. These digital assistants are gendered. Most digital helpers, secretaries, and receptionists are presented as “female,” while digital experts, specialists and professionals are more often “male.” This is not a set-in-stone rule, but it is an overwhelming tendency.
We all know Alexa and Siri, two female digital helpers who turn on music and help with daily tasks. But we also encounter such helpers when calling banks, clinics, and telecom companies, booking tickets or ordering food. Bank of America has Erika; Chase and Wells Fargo use Cleo. They ask how they can help and direct you to the right department. However, when the task that needs to be helped with requires expert opinion or specialized knowledge, the character tends to become male. In the U.S., marketing advice is given by Jasper and legal work by Harvey.
This pattern is global. In Britain, customers of NetWest Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland chat with a digital receptionist Cora; in Brazil there is Lu in online retail. In Japan a similar helper is called Aiko, in Spain she is Aura, in Russia Alisa and Marusya, and in Portugal and Latin-American countries Luzia. In China, Xiaoice, designed as a 19 year old digital girl, offers warm friendly conversation to people who feel lonely.
The pattern is expanded in medicine. For basic health questions, you may speak with an online nurse: Olivia or Molly in the U.S., Ada in Germany, Grace in China, and Amal in Dubai. Even the World Health Organization has a nurse called Florence.
All of these characters you are helped by in low-stake situations are women, but if you need expert opinion or professional advice, which requires specialized knowledge, an overwhelming amount of the time male characters appear. This division is so widespread that in 2019 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization published a report arguing that making helpers “female” and experts “male” reinforces the assumption that women should be pleasant and obliging, and that their role is to help rather than possess expert knowledge.
Digital assistants did not invent this division of labor, yet reflect patterns that already exist. By presenting women as secretaries and men as experts, they make this division seem natural. While changing Alexa to Alex, or giving a digital lawyer a female name, will not solve the larger problem, it can make the stereotype visible. This may help challenge it broadly — in politics, workplaces, and everyday life, where femininity is still too often linked with service and masculinity with authority.