Culture
Does Alexa Reflect or Reject Patriarchal Values?
Article by Emily Daly
While many of us first heard a feminised AI voice in Spike Jonze’s award-winning film, Her, in which a lonely male character falls in love with a disembodied female machine, today this voice has seeped into different facets of our lives such as voice assistants, sat-navs, at supermarket checkouts and public service announcements. However, it has been widely recognised that feminised AI voices are mainly employed in assistive roles, which raises questions around gender: do female AI reinforce gender roles and affect our attitudes towards women in actuality?
Women in Politics: Tough by Nature or Necessity?
Article by Grace Couch
This brings me to my next question: do you have to be inherently ‘strong’ or ‘tough’ to be a politician due to the nature of the role, or does the system condition women to act this way in order to ‘make it’? I would argue that despite the naturally higher levels of empathy in women, the political climate creates a necessity, or at least paranoia, to overcompensate for these characteristics.