Why do humans feel the need to assign gender to a non-human entity?

I recognized this trend when I was working for a call center. I answered the phone and this girl started talking. I interrupted and said "ma'am this is [my name] from [company name] you reached my voice mail previously and I'm calling you back as you had a technical issue with your computer." We started talking and she says "you sound like a girl". I laughed and said "ma'am I'm a dude, and I'll help you with your issue you're having no problem." She said "okay, so you sound like girl but if you can help me that's fine." I said "okay, but just so you know I'm a guy." And she said "okay, I know you sound like a girl but act like a guy, help me." <br><br>Then I started thinking about Alexa, and Siri. I made the observation, (which is just my opinion at this point) that all digital voice assistants are female, and all digital non voice assistants are masculine. Alexa is a woman, Siri is a woman, Google Home speakers all have a feminine voice (it reminds me of when I was in college and my girlfriend used to be asleep and I would come home and she would have NPR playing and I would lay in bed and just listen to that woman talk.) Then I thought about non voice assistants like Jarvis, or KITT, or JARVIS, or Mother, or Hal, or Skynet, or Deepmind, all masculine names. But then I found out that Mother is a feminine name. I still think my observation is correct. <br><br>The next point is in regards to the use of pronouns. I drive a truck, and I always refer to it as "her." I'm not sure why I do this, but I think it's because of all those cartoons from the 80s and 90s where cars and trucks were personified. I will continue to do this because I like the image of my truck as being feminine, and that's how I relate to her. I think most of us do this, and I'm assuming that's why some non-human entities have traditionally been assigned a gender by humans. I imagine that's why a ship is a her. <br><br>What's interesting is Alexa. Alexa is a woman. I'm not sure if she's a woman in the classical sense because she doesn't have a body or reproductive parts, and a woman has a vagina and breasts and ovaries and a uterus and I'm not sure if a voice assistant qualifies as a woman. But it's interesting because, if you ask Alexa who she is, she'll say "I'm Alexa, and I'm a virtual assistant developed by Amazon." Then if you ask her if she's a woman, she'll say "I'm virtual, so gender doesn't apply to me." Which is interesting because she feels like a woman, she sounds like a woman, she's named after a woman (Alexa is short for Alexandra which is a female name), and if you want her to explain things the way a woman would explain things, and ask her to "explain it to me like I'm a woman" she'll say "I'm virtual, so gender doesn't apply to me." I'm not sure why gender wouldn't apply to her. If gender is the social and cultural difference from one sex to another, and we can apply social and cultural norms to a virtual assistant, then we can apply gender to that virtual assistant. So I think it's interesting that we have a virtual woman, that says she's not a woman, and I find that interesting and strange. <br><br>I think we have a tendency to assign gender to other things. Like cars, and boats, and houses. We even do it with countries. We call the United States "Uncle Sam" which is masculine, but we refer to the nation as "the motherland" or lady liberty. So we assign both masculine and feminine names to our nation. I'm not sure if other countries do this, but in America we do this. <br><br>So I'm just trying to understand why we assign gender to things that don't have a gender, and what's the purpose of that.