Sunday, 13 March 2016

NEWS

Why navigation apps have a gender issue


The company Waze uses a marketing strategy which sell different famous voices like Morgan Freeman one to their users. The variety of voices to choose is large but it is surprising that there is no woman's voice. 

“The most important characteristic is a unique voice and brand, regardless of gender,” says Waze’s head of brand and global marketing, Julie Mossler, when pressed about the lack of female celebrity voice upgrades. In contrast, he specified that the decision to buy only male voices rests with the client. 

“A female's voice is more calming,” says Jessi Combs, professional race-car driver and television personality. She may be right. At first, all navigation systems tend to have a female voice, including Waze. Another example is Apple's Siri narrated by Susan Bennett. According to Bennett, the female voices tend to be softer and therefore more pleasant to listen to. 


The data shows that both men and women with lower pitched voices are perceived as stronger and more dominant, as leaders, someone who should be listened to. Moreover, this kind of voices inspire confidence and not only authority. In countries like France or UK, maybe because the culture and the sexism, Siri's debut voice was male by default.

Vocabulary

Personal Opinion

Firstly, the problem is not in that between the male voice or female voice, but there should be no distinction between them. By this I mean that, for example, if we are driving and GPS voice is male, we should not ask ourselves "Why is a male and not a female?" and vice versa. We must eliminate these automatic thoughts and so there will be gender equality.


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