The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot

In The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot, Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy examine the emergence of digital devices that carry out “wifework”–domestic responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to (human) wives. They show that the principal prototype for these virtual helpers–designed in male-dominated industries–is the 1950s housewife: white, middle class, heteronormative, and nurturing, with a spick-and-span home. It’s time, they say, to give the Smart Wife a reboot.