alecalexandrou I can see your point here, but I think there are arguments from the other side as well.
I remember reading a lot a couple of years ago about the voice choices for Alexa, Siri, the Google Assistant and other services being chosen to be female by their creators. A lot of other services like this default to being voiced by women, as well - sat navs, voice response menus on phones, and even things like spam PPI or ’car accident that wasn’t your fault’ calls. The justification is often the same, that people are more responsive to female voices, that they seem more caring, or other traits typically associated with femininity.
The articles I was reading at the time made the point that this was sexist in and of itself. The tech industry is building services that are designed to interact with people in a subservient way, and they are nearly universally voiced by women. We have a generation of people growing up who could easily associate female voice patterns with someone doing what they instruct. UNESCO’s director for gender equality says that this could very likely contribute to subconscious discrimination against women and girls based on their gender.
I’ll see if I can talk to the team about what considerations they make when casting something like this, and in the mean time I’d love to hear more thoughts from you all 🙂
