Most electronic devices which speak to you, such as Siri, have a female voice. This discrimination probably originated for several reasons, including the fact that most persons, according to studies, find the female voice more pleasing. In addition, people old enough to have dealt with telephone operators were used to a disembodied voice belonging to, in most cases, a woman.
However, according to Dr. Clifford Nass (who wrote The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships), BMW had a rude awakening in the 1990s when it released its 5 Series Model with a female voice on the GPS system. Male German drivers were outraged at the prospect of taking directions from a girl. Besides being offended (or perhaps highly insecure in their masculinity), the drivers considered women to be less than knowledgeable and could not conceive that the directions would be reliable, even when informed that the car and the directions were constructed by males. As a result of the revolt, BMW recalled the cars to install a man's voice.
For more information on this example of Teutonic male chauvinism, please click here.
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| By IFCAR (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
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