10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17559
application/pdf
2038-3460
17559
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Linda Paxling
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy, The Smart Wife Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot, MIT Press, 2020
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https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
12
Book Reviews
2022-03-26
2023-06-30
2022-03-26
2023-10-23
243-247
TS
Linda Paxling
2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17559
243
Lund University
2038-3460
2
en
247
Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy, The Smart Wife Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot, MIT Press, 2020
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17559/16409
12
Book Review                                                              243
   Y. Strengers and J. Kennedy
The Smart Wife Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a
Feminist Reboot, Cambridge, MA, the MIT Press, 2020, pp. 320

Linda Paxling Lund University

    The smart wife is here to serve. Feminized artificial intelligence in the
form of digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Google
Home is replacing the human wife. They can also take the shape of anthro-
pomorphic, zoomorphic, or automated home devices or robots and even
sex robots. As with many technologies, smart wives are integrating them-
selves into our lives, offering help that we suddenly feel we cannot live
without. Industry sales figures show that men are more likely to be smart
home consumers. At the same time, women, especially millennial women
between the ages 18 to 35, have shown a keen interest into smart home
technology. In terms of gendered interest, the smart wives are being de-
signed in male-dominated research fields of robotics, AI, and computer
programming, and then further developed and commercialized in global
tech companies vastly outnumbered by men. This unbalance is visible in
the digital feminized workforce reinforcing the age-old stereotype of the
woman as a loving and modest caregiver whose rightful place is the home.
    In the book Smart Wife Strengers and Kennedy give the reader a close
look into the almost stealthily pervasiveness of feminized digital assistants
into our homes, and what the consequences are of re-inscribing outdated
stereotypes such as those of a 1950s American housewife into contempo-
rary assistants. The authors argue that the smart wives serve a patriarchal
system that position women as commodities, upholds nostalgic and sexual
stereotypes and paints a picture of boys merely playing with their toys.
    They present a research aim of rebooting the smart wife to become a
more diversified, equal technoscientific figure in contemporary society.
The authors provide a detailed framework of the discourse of smart wives
by weaving in the academic fields digital media, media and communica-
tion, AI and feminist and queer theory, pop cultural representations of
smart wives, the industries of digital assistants, robots and sex dolls, and
their own empirical research into smart home households. Their empirical
work covers ethnographic interviews, observation and home tours in Aus-
tralian households, and interviews with Australian industry insiders. Addi-
tionally, they have made qualitative content analyses of international pop-
ular media and trade articles about the smart home as well as promotional
videos for smart home products and digital voice assistants.
    The book is structured as follows. The first chapter introduces the dis-
course of the smart wife. Smart in this sense means digital, internet-con-
nected, or robotic and wife refers to the archetype of someone who takes
on all domestic responsibilities within a home. The main prototype for the
244                                                        Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
smart wife is the 1950s US white, middle-class and heteronormative house-
wife. However, she is not the only prototype of the smart wife today as
digital assistants are becoming increasingly popular worldwide and thus
reflect other cultural expressions. China has surpassed the US in global
market share in digital voice assistants with over half of the global market
share. Although quite culturally diverse, several of the Asian countries
(China, India, Japan and South Korea) have a shared technological theme
where the characteristics of a young, timid and sexualized woman or girl
are emphasized in the digital assistant.
    In their pursuit of addressing the future of domestic life and relation-
ships between humans and AI and feminism, Strengers and Kennedy pose
several questions concerning the meaning of the smart wife: “Is [the smart
wife] actually helping our progress toward gender equity? Aside from
keeping us company or ordering the groceries, what else is she doing in
upholding systems of power and oppression in capitalist and patriarchal
societies? What kind of future is she manifesting? And how can we imagine
her living with us?” (p. 4). The authors continue to provide context to the
diversity and complexity of the smart wife archetype by explaining how
domestic responsibilities continue to fall to women around the world and
how people are looking to technology to overcome this gender inequality.
At a first glance, the smart wife sounds like a fantastic solution that can
help solve the ongoing naggering of division of (domestic) labor taking
place in many households in gender-progressive societies. At the same
time, the smart wife is represented as a nostalgic, sexualized, and submis-
sive female figure that has serious consequences in how we treat people.
The increased use of social networks and robotics is further blurring the
boundaries between humans and machines, which in turn affects how we
understand and interact with each other (Turkle 2016). As a result, the
authors are motivated by an agenda of rebooting the smart wife so it serves
a progress toward gender equity and diversity. They position themselves as
feminists who seek to break up the patriarchal system in order to increase
diversity and equity and are inspired by technofeminist scholars Donna
Haraway, Judy Wajcman, Sherry Turkle and Sarah Pink in their pursuit to
liberate the smart wife. In the following four chapters Strengers and Ken-
nedy introduce historical and contemporary smart wives from popular cul-
ture (Rosie), social robotics (Pepper), the digital device market
    In chapter two Rosie - the animated, freewheeling robot housekeeper
from the 1960s tv-series The Jetsons is introduced as representing the core
values of the ideal 1950s housewife. Rosie has influenced the smart home
industry when developing for instance robotic maids and vacuum cleaners.
The gendering of technology is poignant in how women are completely
neglected as a resource for product design even though they are the main
domestic workers. Technology has been and continues to be viewed as the
“men’s domain” (Berg 1994). This is further exemplified by the authors’
research on early adopting smart households and the concept of “digital
Book Review                                                                245
housekeeping” (Tolmie et al. 2007) – the activity of integrating, maintain-
ing, and monitoring digital devices and systems. It was mostly the men who
did the digital housekeeping.
     In chapter three Pepper, a gender ambiguous humanoid, and social ro-
botics is introduced. The authors discuss characteristics such as cute,
friendly and human-like in relation to gender fluidity and obstacles in de-
signing robots that are too human and as a result become fearful and a
threat. Some roboticists have thus focused on developing social robots that
are similar to children in order to develop care-giving relationships. In
chapter four the authors take an unexpected but well sought-after turn to-
wards the ecofeminist movement. Amazon, the largest e-commerce com-
pany in the world, is introduced through the ever-popular digital voice as-
sistant Alexa. Strengers and Kennedy take a critical stance inwards towards
their own ambition of rebooting the smart wife to support gender equity
and diversity. More technology for more people is incompatible with an
ecofeminist perspective that questions the capitalist labour market as it ex-
ploits the planet’s resources and marginalizes women. Strengers and Ken-
nedy argue that it is possible to change the smart wife from within the cap-
italist market system and challenge the system itself through an ecofeminist
perspective.
     Another, very lucrative aspect of the smart wife industry is that of sex
robots. In chapter five Harmony is introduced as the smart wife with ben-
efits. Harmony shares several characteristics like those of the other digital
assistants and its creators share similar backgrounds as white, heterosexual,
US men. Harmful acts such as robotic rape and violence towards sexbots
can further play a detrimental impact on women. Strengers and Kennedy
go on to argue that the robot-sexual services market is not supporting gen-
der equality and diversity. At the same time, if for instance affirmative con-
sent can be integrated in the design of sexbots, there are advantages to be
had. Referring back to the social robots as relational, how we treat robots
reflects our actions in other relationships. In chapters six and seven com-
mon stereotypes among men and women are discussed in detail. In chapter
six the historical framing of women’s bodies and minds as imperfect is re-
flected in todays’ digital assistant. In the text, smart wives are described as
“bitches with glitches”, a derogatory name entangled with everyday sexism
and passive femininity. In chapter seven the authors deal with the gendered
concept of boys and their toys. The gendering of technology as a male do-
main has had serious implications for not only women but also to a certain
extent for men as well in terms of what is implied and expected in mascu-
linity.
     In the final chapter the authors return to their two-fold aim of provid-
ing a critique of the stereotypical cultural phenomena of the smart wife and
creating an intervention of the very same phenomena so as to expand pos-
sible scenarios for the smart wife to progress toward gender equity and
diversity. Strengers and Kennedy have developed a manifest as a conscious
246                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
act of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway 2016). The manifest includes
elements of queering the gender of the smart wife, changing the premises
of who codes the smart wife, increasing female representation in technol-
ogy, and embedding affirmative consent and ethical guidelines. The au-
thors argue that the reboot of the smart wife will benefit women all over
by improving the role of women intellectually and publicly, by creating a
safer environment and furthering the sexual liberation on women’s terms.
Additionally, they emphasize that the renewal of smart wives will benefit
all other genders as well.
    This book is a thought-provoking and enjoyable read. The reader is
taken on a journey to learn how the socio-cultural representations such as
those of a 1950s US housewife are re-inscribed in many of the digital assis-
tants we use today, and what implications this has on the smart wife indus-
try and to a greater extent on gender equity and diversity (and the planet)
in contemporary society. Even though the text is quite theory-driven the
authors manage to mix it up with plenty of witty pop cultural references
and market-relevant know-how which opens up for a broader audience.
    Having read this book I would argue that we need to stop thinking of
smart wives as merely innovative “technofixes” that will solve the division
of (domestic) labor and begin thinking and caring for them as beloved,
relational artefacts in order to increase equity and diversity between hu-
mans and machines alike. Similar to Haraway’s cyborg figuration the smart
wife is a provocative and complex entity challenging the false dichotomy
of the social and the technical entangled with opportunities of changing
human-machine relations and with complicated ethical issues of unsustain-
ability and power relations. This book would furthermore be of interest for
the posthuman discourse on care. The smart wife opens up for an interest-
ing discussion on the division between things to be concerned about and
matters we care for. When we reframe humans as inseparably entwined
with the non-human what implications can this have on the relation be-
tween humans and our future digital workforce?

References
Berg, A.-J. (1994) A gendered socio-technical construction: The smart house, in C.
       Cockburn and R. Furst Dilic (eds.), Bringing Technology Home: Gender and
       Technology in Changing Europe. Buckingham, Open University Press, pp.
       165-180.
Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene,
      Durham and London, Duke University Press.
Tolmie, P., Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh, C. and Benford, S. (2007) Mak-
       ing the home network at home: Digital housekeeping, in L. J. Bannon, I.
       Wagner, C. Gutwin, R. H. R. Harper and K. Schmidt (eds.), ECSCW 2007:
       Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer-Supported Coop-
       erative Work, Cham, Springer, pp. 331-350.
Book Review                                                               247
Turkle, S. (2016) Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age,
       London and New York, Penguin Books.


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