In the UK (and France, IIRC), Siri launched with a male voice only. The poor support for women's issues in many apps (rape crisis centres in virtual assistants

In the UK (and France, IIRC), Siri launched with a male voice only. The poor support for women's issues in many apps (rape crisis centres in virtual assistants, period tracking in Apple Health etc) do represent serious failures in product development, but I suspect that the voice gender issue is a bit of a double-bind. If a male voice was the default in the US, I expect we'd be seeing thinkpieces about how Siri was reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes about men being authoritative.