Within HCI and adjacent spaces there has been a growing recognition that we must consider
socially constructed and situated characteristics such as gender. Not only in terms of the platform
and its users but also the creators, researchers, and other stakeholders
within the larger communities of practice. One area in which a self-critical perspective on
gendering may be necessary is the study of socially embodied artificial agents. From
voice assistants like Apple's Siri to humanoid robots like Pepper, these agents often have
human-like features in their design. Gendering is the association of gender with a person, place,
or thing. A wealth of research stretching back decades has shown that people tend to react to
gender cues in the design of socially embodied agents in line with stereotypes associated
with gender in the larger societal framework. People will attribute gender even when agents
are intended to be gender neutral. The construct of gender is often overlooked in the design and
study of socially embodied agents but we cannot continue to be gender evasive. In this work we
take a gender conscious step forward using a novel self-critical frame by asking: how has gendering
been approached by researchers in research on Pepper? Pepper a commercial humanoid robot was
created by Aldebaran-SoftBank robotics. We chose to anchor this work on Pepper due to ambiguity
when it comes to how people have ascribed its gender. Our main contributions are as follows.
We provide empirical evidence of unconscious gendering as well as diverse descriptions
of gender by researchers and participants to Pepper. We also contribute initial evidence that
researcher gendering has influenced participant gendering. We provide a practical framework
and especially a critical checklist to guide theory and practice. We conducted a systematic
review with directed content analysis, in particular focusing on pronoun usage and
descriptions of gendering present in the text. We selected seven sub-questions to answer our
overarching research question. The first is: What gender has Pepper been assigned by researchers,
if any? The second is, what gender has pepper been assigned by participants, if any? Has there been
a manipulation check on gender? What reasons if any are given by researchers for Pepper's gender
ascriptions? What findings are there based on participant gender? What findings are there based
on participant perception of Pepper's gender? Finally, we looked at whether or not there was
a relationship between participant and researcher gendering. Now we'll go into the results.
The authors of only 12 papers recognized and openly discussed Pepper's gender of these the
majority referred to Pepper with object pronouns. In 26 papers no gender attribution was found.
Most papers used objective gender pronouns for Pepper. In four cases researchers switched their
use of pronouns. In most of the papers participant attribution of Pepper's gender was not available.
Just over half of the papers showed that participants gendered Pepper in different
ways. Notably children as young as 4 years old gendered Pepper. 92% of papers did not report on
a manipulation check. Most conducted a typical check before the main experiment in order to
confirm whether or not their assignations matched. For the most part, researchers did not provide
reasons for gendering or not gendering Pepper. In eight papers researchers provided reasoning that
was insufficient to understand their assignment of gender to Pepper. Seven papers noted that gender
cues existed but there was a lack of consensus across the research papers about what genders
those cues cued. In six papers the authors claimed that Pepper is gender neutral and this occurred
even when they found that participants gendered Pepper in non-neutral ways. About half of the
surveyed papers reported on participant gender but did not use it. 11% of papers did find effects.
Several papers reported on results despite methodological and analytical weaknesses.
Most assumed a binary model for participants. In most studies researchers did not consider
how participant perceptions of Pepper's gender may have influenced results. For the most part,
methodological limitations and a lack of detail in reporting obscured understanding. Of the 23 papers
in which participants ascribed gender to Pepper, 8 showed that researcher ascriptions matched those
of participants exactly. We found a significant difference indicating that there was some
influence of researcher gendering on participants. Here we have summarized our main findings in six
challenges underlying the state of affairs. Gendering was often invisible, having been
taken for granted or assumed. Perceptions of Pepper's gender varied from objective to masculine
to feminine to neutral to fluid to multiple attributions. In contrast researchers' models of
participant gender tended to be binary. This means that researchers' implicit or explicit models of
gender did not quite match what was really going on in the world. By "decentering gender," we
mean acknowledging but not acting on gender as a nucleus of study. This appeared in several forms.
One was the act of citing and discussing other work that addressed gender without doing the same.
A more subtle form was through researchers' insufficient justifications of their limited
approach to gender and gendering. Gender was moved from the center to the sidelines. Neutrality was
another common theme in ascribing Pepper's gender. Yet most of the literature showed a failure to
find agreement among participants when it came to attributing a neutral gender. Latent factors that
converged with gender but were unexamined by the researchers seem to have influenced perceptions,
as well. Age was most apparent, both in terms of participant age and how gender was conceptualized
and described. Some work also pointed to language and translation. Gender was circumscribed in ways
related to the embodiment of Pepper and larger models in society. We also found some evidence
that researchers' gendering of Pepper influenced how participants gendered Pepper, especially when
researchers did not explicitly address gender. So what can we do? In a nutshell: we can use
the critical checklist; we can state our position on gendering; we can document participant gender;
we can use gender-expansive framings; we can confirm perceptions of gender; we can report
all findings on gender and gendering; and we can ensure consistency in gendering. The checklist is
comprised of a series of foci for which there are set of questions that researchers can ask while
they're conducting research. Each question targets a particular challenge. We've also provided an
indicator of which questions are essential for any research involving humanoid agents like Pepper.
Towards a more gender-expansive framing, we offer the following preliminary set of
responses that can be given to participants in manipulation checks or even the main study. This
work was limited in a few ways. Nevertheless, our critical exploration of the humanoid robot Pepper
has revealed how gendering can be an important, influential,
and overlooked factor of research practice. A gender-evasive or gender unconscious approach
has limited our research. We have provided a way forward through clear and reasonable changes to
typical practice. We commit to taking this on in our future work and we hope you will join us.