How Technology, Taxes, and Temperatures Encourage Gender Bias

We’ve looked at snow removal gender bias.

Instead, our examples might have been technology, taxes, and temperature settings.

Gender Bias

Voice Techology

In 1924, asked about women, station directors said they sounded nasal and shrill on the radio. One  reason was congressional limits on the bandwidth allocated to each station. As a result, equipment manufacturers limited their signals to a “voiceband” between 300 and 3400 hertz. Sadly, the range they selected to communicate human speech was really the range they need to communicaste male speech. Eliminating, the higher frequencies that women use, it modified what we sounded like. When women spoke, sound engineers had to turn up the volume.

Somewhat like early radio, 2019 research told us that Google’s voice recognition works best  for men. A 2019 HBR article gave accuracy rate grades for Google voice recognition. Whereas white male recognition was 92 percent, it was 79 percent for white females, and less for minorities.

Tax Forms

After surveying federal tax forms, economists from the University of Michigan wound up with numbers that displayed a bias toward men. Because Form 1040 has 2 lines for names, someone is first. and “spouse” is second. Doing the count, they found that 88 percent of the time, it’s the men who are first.

Taking the next step toward behavioral economics, we can say that confirmation bias kicks in here. With confirmation bias, we have something we previousy believed being validated by something new because we want our previous belief to remain true–to be confirmed. I would suggest that simply seeing a man’s name before a spouse’s (implicitly) confirms a supremacy bias.

Temperature Settings

At the office, while temperature settings are supposed to be generic, they target men. When engirneers design heating and cooling systems, they typically use numbers based on male metabolic rates, male clothing, and male weight. As a result, we wind up with a gender biased temperature of 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Most women, though, like it closer to 77. One reason for the gap could be that men’s muscles give off more heat.

Our Bottom Line: Choice Architecture

Whether looking at snow or tech, taxes or temperatures, we see gender bias. Asking why, we can guess that it’s not intentional. However, a behavioral economist (and plain old logic) would say your policies depend on your “choice architecture.” In other words, our decisions depend on the environment in which we make them. They depend on the incentives that nudge public works departments, city councils, and piano designers.

The choice architecture from regulatory authorities limited the bandwidth to male territory. Tax form design necessitate that a hierarchy be articulated and climate systems need prototypes. I would suggest that when men dominate public policy and product design, then the choices they make reflect their own life experience. Male dominated choice architecture leads to gender bias.

My sources and more: For tax form bias, this WSJ article is the place to start. From there, it made sense to look at gender bias elsewhere and the artilce smultiplied. My first step was The New Yorker Magazine. Then, I returned to past sources that included Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Built By Men by Caroline Criado Perez. The book is excellent. I hope that also you will take a look at our past econlife post Pink it, Shrink It and Gender Design Discrimination. And finally, do also read the NY Times 1975 article on the wonderfully memorable women’s strike in Iceland. (Parts of “Our Bottom Line” were in a previous econlife post.)