{"id":77042,"date":"2025-05-27T01:04:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T05:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=77042"},"modified":"2025-05-27T01:04:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T05:04:03","slug":"who-really-benefits-from-smart-tech-at-home-optimising-family-life-can-reinforce-gender-roles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/who-really-benefits-from-smart-tech-at-home-optimising-family-life-can-reinforce-gender-roles\/","title":{"rendered":"Who really benefits from smart tech at home? \u2018Optimising\u2019 family life can reinforce gender roles"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Have you heard of the \u201cmale technologist\u201d mindset? It may sound familiar, and you may even know such people personally.<\/p>\n

Design researchers Turkka Keinonen and Nils Ehrenberg have defined\u00a0the male technologist<\/a>\u00a0as someone who is obsessed with concerns about energy, efficiency and reducing labour.<\/p>\n

This archetype became apparent in my PhD research when I interviewed 12 families about their use of early domestic robots and smart home devices Amazon Alexa and Google Home. One father over-engineered his smart home so much, his kids struggled to turn the lights on and off.<\/p>\n

The male technologist in the home, as seen in my research, reflects wider trends of the\u00a0Silicon Valley \u201ctech bro\u201d archetype<\/a>,\u00a0the techno-patriarchy<\/a>, and the growing influence of a\u00a0tech oligarchy in the Western world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The male technologist often complicates and overcompensates with technology, raising the question: are these real problems tech can solve, or just quick fixes masking deeper issues?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about making men feel guilty<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The term \u201cmale technologist\u201d isn\u2019t about making men feel guilty for using technology to innovate. Anyone can adopt this mindset. It can even apply to institutions that prioritise innovation and efficiency over emotional insight, lived experience or community-based ways of creating change.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a reflection of how a masculine drive to solve surface-level problems can come before addressing patriarchal systems that have shaped the long-standing\u00a0gendered division of domestic labour and \u201cmental load\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mental load is the invisible, ongoing effort of planning, organising and managing daily life that often goes unnoticed but is essential to keeping things running.<\/p>\n

Take one of my research participants, Hugo (name changed for privacy). A father of two, Hugo embodies this male technologist mindset by creating \u201cbusiness scenarios\u201d to solve his family\u2019s problems with smart home automation.<\/p>\n

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Treating family life like a system to optimise, Hugo noticed his wife looking stressed while cooking. So, he installed a smart clock with Alexa in the kitchen to help her manage multiple timers.<\/p>\n

Hugo saw it as an empathetic solution, tailored to the way she liked to cook. But instead of sharing the load of this domestic task, he \u201cengineered\u201d around it, offloading responsibility to smart devices.<\/p>\n

Smart home tech promises to save time, but it hasn\u2019t solved who does what at home. Instead, it hands more power to those with digital know-how, letting them automate tasks they may never have done or fully understood in the first place.<\/p>\n

Typically, these tend to be men. A\u00a0recent survey by Kaspersky<\/a>\u00a0showed 72% of men are the ones who set up their families\u2019 smart devices, compared to 47% of women.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately,\u00a0a recent Australian survey<\/a>\u00a0found women still do more unpaid domestic work than men. Even in households where women have full-time jobs, they spend almost four hours more on household chores per week than men do.<\/p>\n

Who really benefits in a smart home<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Amazon first released\u00a0Alexa back in 2014<\/a>, with Apple and Google quickly following with their own smart home speakers. In the past decade, some people have adopted the hype of the \u201csmart home\u201d to make life easier by controlling technology without needing to get off the couch.<\/p>\n

But smart technology can also\u00a0affect access to shared spaces<\/a>, create new forms of control over things and people in the home, and constrain human interactions. And it can be set up to reinforce the existing hierarchy within the household.<\/p>\n

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By his own admission, Hugo has over-engineered the home to the point where his children struggle to turn the lights on and off, having disabled the physical switches in favour of voice commands.<\/p>\n

My research looked at how automation is changing care giving and acts of service in the home. With \u201ccompassionate automation\u201d, someone could use smart technology to support loved ones in thoughtful ways, such as setting up smart home routines or reminders to make daily life easier.<\/p>\n

But even when it comes from a place of care, tech-based help is not the same as human care. It may not always feel meaningful to the person receiving or providing it. As another participant in my research put it:<\/p>\n

I think there are still human interactions [..] that you probably don\u2019t want AI to mediate for you.<\/em><\/p>\n

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So what is the alternative to a male technologist mindset?\u00a0Feminist<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0queer technology studies<\/a>\u00a0offer a different lens. Researchers in these fields argue our interactions with technology are never neutral;\u00a0they are shaped by gender, power and cultural norms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When we recognise this, we can imagine ways of designing and using tech in ways that emphasise care and relationships. Instead of setting up a smart timer in the kitchen, the technologist could ask his wife what she\u2019s cooking and join her, using the voice assistant together to\u00a0follow a recipe step by step<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to the future of smart homes<\/strong><\/h4>\n

As Alexa+ rolls out later this year with a\u00a0\u201csmarter\u201d generative AI brain<\/a>, Google\u00a0increases Gemini integration<\/a>\u00a0into its Home app, and tech companies race to\u00a0build humanoid robots that can cook dinner and fold laundry<\/a>, we\u2019re seeing the ultimate fantasy of the male technologist come to life: more toys to presumably solve the problems of domestic labour at home.<\/p>\n

But if men are now taking on more of the digital load, will the mental load finally shift too? Or will they continue to automate the easy, visible tasks while the emotional and cognitive labour still goes unseen and unshared?
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Optimus folds a shirt pic.twitter.com\/3F5o3jVLq1<\/a><\/p>\n

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n