IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023 - 19

Book Review
The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and
Other Smart Home Devices Need a
Feminist Reboot-Yolande Strengers
and Jenny Kennedy (Cambridge, MA,
USA: MIT Press, 2020, 305+x pp.)
Reviewed by Rachel Maines
Columbia University Seminar in the History and
Philosophy of Science
New York, NY 10027 USA
 In Judy SyferS now-classic December 1971
feminist essay " I Want a Wife, " published in New
York Magazine's preview of Ms., the author listed the
reasons why a person might want someone in their
life who would willingly do the chores, mind the children,
manage the house, shop for provisions, provide
social and sexual services, and function as a general
household dogsbody. " My God, " Syfers asked, " Who
wouldn't want a wife? " Yolande Strengers and Jenny
Kennedy, while not directly citing Syfers, ask a similar
question in their 2020 analysis of what they call
" smart wives, " including digital assistants like Siri
and Alexa. " Meet the smart wife, " they invite us on
the first page, " She's pleasant, helpful, and available
at an increasingly affordable price. Millions of people
from around the world are now turning to connected
and robotic devices to provide the domestic,
caring, and intimacy services historically delivered
by real-life wives " of the kind described by Syfers.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2023.3240201
Date of current version: 7 March 2023.
The Australian authors point to a worldwide " wife
drought, " as more women turn away from traditional
household roles for more rewarding careers outside
the home, as a significant component of demand
for these types of services. " The principle [sic] prototype
for the smart wife's mainframe is the 1950s'
U.S. housewife and her transatlantic cousin in the
United Kingdom. Many contemporary societies still
ache with nostalgia for this white, middle-class and
heteronormative housewife. "
Strengers and Kennedy are clear-eyed in their
assessment of how sophisticated and user-friendly
robot technology currently is. They point out, for
example, that if you are seeking a device that will
roll up and store your socks, fold your fitted sheets,
pick up clutter from the floor, cook a full meal, and
change the baby's diapers, you are, at this point in
history, pretty much out of luck. For these and many
other tasks, human labor is still necessary, and, as
the authors observe, most of the humans currently
engaged in it are female: " Worldwide, women perform
around 75 percent of total unpaid care and
domestic labor. " They assert, correctly, that this
March 2023
0278-0097/23©2023 IEEE
19
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7673-1377

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023

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