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The gendered smart home: outsourcing
domestic labour to automation devices
Yolande Strengers
Larissa Nicholls
Centre for Urban Research
RMIT University, Melbourne
The smart home
• ‘A "smart home" can be defined as a
residence equipped with computing
and information technology which
anticipates and responds to the
needs of the occupants, working to
promote their comfort, convenience,
security and entertainment through
the management of technology within
the home and connections to the world
beyond.’ (Aldrich, 2003: 17)
• Growing, much-hyped market
• Smart home demand slower than
predicted (http://www.connectedhome.com.au/consumer-demand-
for-connected-home-products-slows-dramatically-in-first-
half-of-2015/)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 2
Electric home: intended to free up women’s time
Westinghouse’s
‘Total Electric Home’
“Imagine this: Total
Electric Living... where
electricity does
absolutely
everything: heats, air
conditions, cooks,
preserves food, lights,
entertains,
encourages hobbies,
makes it the easiest
way ever for you and
your family to be
happier, healthier, to
live fuller lives”
Source: http://thriftshopromantic.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/futures-so-bright-inside-1950s-total.html
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 3
• Outsourcing domestic labour to appliances and
electricity has a long history (Forty 1986; Schwartz Cowan
1989)
• Home appliances (e.g. vacuum cleaners & irons)
previously marketed to women
• Raised cleanliness (and other) expectations (Schwartz Cowan 1989; Shove 2003)
Industrial home: more time (and work) for mother
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 4
The smart home: deceptively gender neutral
• Appearance of gender neutrality
• Absence of gender (and people)
‘Imagine one person being on holidays anywhere in the world and
being able to check on his/her home from the laptop. Or, if one forgets
to lower the thermostat before he/she leaves for work, imagine
him/her logging onto a secure site to change the setting to an energy-
saving level.’ (Maclean’s 2006)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 5
Image source: http://www.householdappliancesworld.com/tag/smart-home/
Content analysis of the 21st Century smart home
• Analysed 221 magazine, newspaper and web articles published since 2000
• Searched for ‘smart home’, ‘home automation’ and derivatives/ related terms
• Qualitative inductive coding of article text (Schreier 2012)
• Frequency coding for 166 primary images using pre-defined parameters
drawn from content (Schreier 2012)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 6
Who is writing about the smart home?
• More men write about the smart home than women
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 7
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Male Female Unspecfied
Author gender
Author gender
Who is designing the smart home?
• As computers entered the home, women’s participation in computing science declined (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding)
• Low numbers of women in engineering and system integration
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 8
Absence of domesticity (and people) in 21st Century
smart home visions
• Only 3 images showed any domestic
activity (e.g. dishwashing, cooking,
laundry)
– a cartoon of parents looking after
children
– a cartoon of a woman doing
various things around the home
– a robot doing the cooking
• 27/166 (around 1/6) images included
people
– Gender mix, mostly young,
caucasian individuals living in
smart home
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 9
Optimisation and efficiency of household tasks
• Earlier versions of smart home ignored housework
(Berg 1994)
• In 21st Century smart home domestic labour embodies
masculine ideals of efficiency and optimisation
With just a text to your laundry pair, users can find out how much
time is left on their load of laundry; or even with a text to the
refrigerator, they can find out what they need while out grocery
shopping.’ (Appliance Design, 2015)
• Uncomplicated delegation of tasks to technologies:
‘you can instruct a vacuum-cleaning robot to double-up as a security
guard for your house.’ (http://www.ibtimes.co.in/aiming-apple-like-ecosystem-samsung-says-
all-its-future-devices-will-feature-smartthings-613849)
• Homogenised, undifferentiated, tech-centric understanding of domestic
practices, ignores sensory experience (Pink 2005)
• Resource Man does the laundry? (Strengers 2013; 2014)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 10
The smart home serves you
• Smart home intended to replace or provide:
– ‘Rosie the maid’-type robot (Jetsons)
– ‘Nanny cameras’/ ‘digital nannies’
– Housecleaners/ housekeeper
– Butlers
– ‘Teddy the Guardian’ (to replace parenting/
nursing responsibilities in homes and
hospitals)
'If your house is able to think and feel, what can it
do for you? Well, it could be an affordable or
even a free housekeeper that can automatically
take care of your family and property to make
your life easy, comfort, organized and secure’ (http://www.asmag.com/showpost/17834.aspx)
Image source: http://hero.wikia.com/wiki/Rosie_The_Robot_Maid
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 11
Meet Lili (and Ivee, Siri & Alexa)
• Gendered (female) smart (home) applications/ platforms
• Video: http://www.fibaro.com/en/i-am-coming-home-LiLi
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 12
‘PAT’ from Disney 1999 Smart House movie
• PAT (Personalised Applied Technology) smart home system is surrogate wife
and mother to single Dad Nick and his two children (https://gigaom.com/2015/01/03/smart-
house-predicted-the-smart-home-in-1999-so-where-is-it/)
• Video: https://youtu.be/4uSGOZ_VJc4
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 13
A ‘servile spouse’
• ‘You like to talk; you want a home that will listen to - and obey - you. Ever
wish you could stumble through the front door after a long day and say, "Turn
on the TV and start dinner!" Unless you have a particularly servile spouse,
that tactic is unlikely to get you anything but silence - or nasty glares. The
Home Automated Living HAL2000 speech-recognition system can bring you
closer to that vision’ (PC Computer 2000).
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 14
Image source:
http://a1950swifesguide.blogspot.com
.au/p/blog-page.html
Serving Dad’s needs
• ‘So when dad arrives home, smart-home technology will turn on his
favourite music play list, boil the kettle, dim the lights to his preferred level,
turn the television on and switch to the news. It will then interact and ask dad
what he wants next - and hopefully even turn down the children's music’ (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/smart-homes-are-simplicity-itself/story-e6frg9zo-1226755178531)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 15
Image source: http://www.kxly.com/home-and-family/fathers-day/5-must-have-man-cave-essentials-for-dad/9236076
Happy families
• ‘Something the whole family can enjoy – A family that plays together,
stays together. Although home automation is all of the above, most of all it’s a
lot of fun for the entire family. You will find home automation will bring the
family closer together as everyone learns about the technology’s
capabilities together.’ (http://compnetworking.about.com/od/homeautomationvalueproposition/a/top-reasons-to-automate-
your-home.htm)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 16
Image source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-were-the-earliest-video-games.htm
Good parenting
• ‘Your Hue can alert you and your children when it's time for bed, time to
leave for the school bus or when you need to grab the umbrella before
walking outside.’
• ‘Our daughter knows that she can't get out of bed in the morning until her
bedside lamp turns green.’
(http://resources.uknowkids.com/blog/keep-your-family-on-schedule-with-smart-lighting)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 17
Smart homes: intended to free up men’s time
• Silent (and discrete) erasure of domestic
labour (traditional ‘women’s work’)
• Subtly marketed towards men:
‘LG today unveiled a smart home
system that will enable a fridge to text
you how many cold beers you have in
your fridge.’(http://www.news.com.au/technology/lg-homechat-allows-you-to-
text-your-fridge-and-receive-a-text-back/story-e6frfrnr-
1226796284606)
• Designed to create more leisure time for
men
• Family harmony and cohesion an important
side benefit
• Solution to the ‘wife drought’ (Crabb 2014)
– Domestic and parenting tasks assigned
to gendered smart technologies
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 18
Re-gendering the smart home vision
• Common solution proposed: enrol more women in tech-related disciplines
– Runs the risk of prioritising same tech-centric vision
• Enrol disciplines which account for the messiness, improvisation and
adaptation of everyday domestic activities (Dourish & Bell 2011)
– Sociology, anthropology, cultural studies etc.
• Value women’s (and men’s) skills in housework and caregiving as a design
resource (Berg 1994)
• Recognise and value meaning associated with performing roles such ‘mum’
and ‘dad’ (Davidoff et al. 2006)
• Draw inspiration where technology is supporting and changing traditional
gender relations and roles (e.g. Technology Dad and flexible work
arrangements) (http://www.boygirlmodernworld.com/2015/11/introducing-and-unpacking-technology-dad-
juggling-work-and-home-in-the-21st-century/)
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 19
Thank you
@yolandestreng @LarissaNicholls
This research was supported under the Australian Research
Council's Discovery Early Career Researchers Award funding scheme
(project number DE150100278).
RMIT University © 2015 Centre for Urban Research 20
References
• Aldrich F K, 2003, "Smart homes: past, present and future", in Inside the Smart Home Ed R Harper (Springer-Verlag London
Limited, London) pp 17-39.
• Berg A J, 1994, "A gendered socio-technical construction: the smart house", in Bringing technology home: gender and
technology in changing Europe Eds C Cockburn, R Furst Dilic (Open University Press, Buckingham) pp 165-180Dourish P, Bell
G, 2011 Divining a Digital Future (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts)
• Davidoff S, Lee M, Yiu C, Zimmerman J, Dey A, 2006, "Principles of Smart Home Control", in UbiComp 2006: Ubiquitous
Computing Eds P Dourish, A Friday (Springer Berlin / Heidelberg) pp 19-34
• Dourish P, Bell G, 2011 Divining a Digital Future (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts)
• Forty A, 1986 Objects of Desire: Design and Society 1750-1980 (Thames and Hudson, London).
• Harper R, 2003, "Inside the smart home: ideas, possibilities and methods", in Inside the Smart Home Ed R Harper (Springer-
Verlag London Ltd, London [UK]) pp 1-13.
• Schreier M, 2012 Qualitative content analysis in practice (SAGE Publications, London)
• Schwartz Cowan R, 1989 More Work for Mother: the Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave
(Free Association Books, London).
• Shove E, 2003 Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: the Social Organisation of Normality (Berg Publishers, Oxford).
• Strengers Y, 2013 Smart energy technologies in everyday life: Smart Utopia? (Palgrave MacMillan, London)
• Strengers Y, 2014, "Smart energy in everyday life: are you designing for resource man?" interactions 21 24-31
• Strengers Y, Nicholls L, 2015, "Optimising the 21st Century smart home: in pursuit of perfected living", presented at 4S 40th
Annual Meeting (Denver, Colorado), 11-14 November.
RMIT University © 2014 Centre for Urban Research 21