Gender and speech - critical design concepts
These AI assistant concepts are meant to further conversations around gender and speech
Let’s make it taboo to interrupt women
Numerous studies have examined this phenomenon, and they’ve all reached the same conclusion: Men consistently interrupt women. For example, over the last 12 years - during which time women have comprised 24% of the Supreme Court - female justices being interrupted accounted for 32% of interruptions overall, which female justices interrupting others accounted for just 4% of interruptions overall. As more women have joined the court, the situation only seems to be getting worse. As of 2015, with three female justices on the bench (30%), 65.9% of all interruptions are directed at them.
Even when a group is evenly split between men and women, women do not necessarily have an equal voice. One study found that women on school boards did not speak for an equal amount of time as men until women comprised at least 80% of the board. (source)
I reimagined the buzzer from the classic boardgame Taboo as an AI-enabled meeting assistant to combat the phenomenon of women being talked over in meetings. Here is how it works: put it in the center of the table at your meeting. Adjust the dial to reflect the makeup of the group. Press the top to turn it on. If it detects an interruption of a female speaker, it buzzes in a loud, annoying way. If it detects that men are speaking more than 50% of the time, it will turn blue. If women are dominating the conversation, it will turn pink. The goal is to make sure that all groups have their voices represented equally during the conversation.
This project was featured on Yanko Design
Forget Alexa, meet “Alex”
I once had a friend tell me he didn’t listen to any music with female vocalists because he doesn’t like the sound of women’s voices. Similarly, many female podcasters are bombarded with negative reviews complaining about their voices, as are female politicians. This smart speaker is designed for anyone who doesn’t like the sound of women’s voices but still values their perspectives and wants to hear what they have to say. Simply pair with your phone, and “Alex” will perform speech recognition on the audio input and read it back to you in a man’s voice.
It turns out that media technologies, starting with the gramophone and phonograph, were made with a standardized male physiology in mind. Inbuilt bias in the media system carries forward to the present and has political consequences, for example, accusations that Hillary Clinton has a “shrill” speaking voice. (source)