abstract

It Sounds Like A Woman: Exploring Gender Stereotypes in South Korean Voice Assistants

Authors:

Gilhwan Hwang,

Jeewon Lee,

Cindy Yoonjung Oh,

Joonhwan LeeAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '19: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Paper No.: LBW2413, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312915

Published: 02 May 2019 Publication History

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Abstract

For the past few years, voice assistant (VA) has been widely used around the world. Current voice assistants provide a gendered voice to sound more natural and life-like, but most of them have a female voice as a default voice setting. Our study explored how gender stereotypes of women are reflected in voice assistants with female voices through analyzing five South Korean VAs. We collected 1,602 responses from VAs and conducted a thematic analysis to examine the patterns of the gender stereotype. As a result, we have categorized three distinct characteristics: (1) bodily display, (2) subordinate attitude, (3) sexualization. We suggested that these stereotypical traits could create a power dynamic between users and female agents.

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Cited By

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Yoo YJung JKang CKim HJun S(2024)Do Computers Have Gender Roles?: Investigating Users’ Gender Role Stereotyping of Anthropomorphized Voice AgentsArchives of Design Research10.15187/adr.2024.02.37.1.12337:1(123-136)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.15187/adr.2024.02.37.1.123
Seaborn KSawa YWatanabe M(2024)Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural SensitivityHuman Behavior and Emerging Technologies10.1155/2024/32387372024(1-21)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1155/2024/3238737
Mahmood AHuang C(2024)Gender Biases in Error Mitigation by Voice AssistantsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373378:CSCW1(1-27)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637337
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Index Terms

It Sounds Like A Woman: Exploring Gender Stereotypes in South Korean Voice Assistants
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Published In

CHI EA '19: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2019

3673 pages

ISBN:9781450359719

DOI:10.1145/3290607

General Chairs:
Stephen Brewster
University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
,
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
TU Wien, Austria
,
Program Chairs:
Anna Cox
University College London, UK
,
Vassilis Kostakos
University of Melbourne, Australia

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Published: 02 May 2019

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CHI '19: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 4 - 9, 2019

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Seaborn KSawa YWatanabe M(2024)Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural SensitivityHuman Behavior and Emerging Technologies10.1155/2024/32387372024(1-21)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1155/2024/3238737
Mahmood AHuang C(2024)Gender Biases in Error Mitigation by Voice AssistantsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373378:CSCW1(1-27)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637337
Lee SPark HKim S(2024)Gender and task effects of human – machine communication on trusting a Korean intelligent virtual assistantBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.230613643:16(4172-4191)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2024
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