Freakonomics Radio has more than 10 years in 500 episodes worth of answers to your biggest questions. Make sure to check out their recent series about the economics, politics, and ethics of returning the world's art to its makers. Today we explore gender on people and things. Ashley Mart is an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford GSB.
Why is a boat a “she?” Why give names like Alexa or Siri to inanimate pieces of software? According to assistant professor of organizational behavior Ashley Martin, ascribing gender to everyday objects helps us to connect with them more deeply.
“Gender is this humanizing force that allows people to interact with non-human things as if they’re human,” says Martin, whose research focuses on gender equality, gender inclusion, and gender’s role within team and organizational dynamics. And while Martin is interested in how anthropomorphizing technology can benefit the humans who use it, she also notes how “problematic stereotypes” could be perpetuated as a result.
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Martin joins host Matt Abrahams to discuss how our ideas about gender inform the way we relate to the world and how we can leverage the latest research to promote greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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