(Part 1 here:  )
So what did we learn from Mary Beard’s programme on the Public Voice of Women? A lot of examples from History and Art and Literature, a few from Geography and Entertainment but nothing really from Sports or Science and Nature. (Yes, I nicked the headings from Trivial Pursuit, what’s wrong with that?)
Mary Beard is a highly intelligent, articulate and well-read classics scholar. Hence her experience in and bias towards certain subjects, which made for a fascinating presentation about the historical records (factual and in the fiction of the times) that demonstrate ways in which the sound of a woman’s voice has been regarded. She tried to separate the issue of women’s voices from straightforward misogyny, which I’m not sure is possible. Yes, there are differences, but are these the reason for the discrimination we see today? Shakespeare regularly had women passing themselves off as men by changing their clothes in his plays (never the other way round, as far as I recall), which is even more amusing when you remember that all of his actors would have been male. So a man playing a woman pretending to be a man…
More recently, we know that Margaret Thatcher had training to lower her speaking voice – one way to be taken more seriously in the male-dominated political arena. As a matter of fact, some men in the public eye have had similar training – including actors who’ve been advised to take up smoking to give them gravelly tones. Not a price I’d be willing to pay for a sexier voice!
So men and women alike have realised that we judge people by their speaking tone. Deeper voices are more serious, mature, trustworthy, sexy and therefore something to be aspired to. As a young man, my Dad tried to push his singing voice into the bass register – until he gave up and learned to make the most of his lovely tenor range later in life.
While we’re so close to home, my own voice is deep for a woman – a low alto for any singers reading this. I’ve had people mistake me for a man on the phone. Even one person (Receptionist at the dental surgery I used to attend) who behaved very oddly, asking if the appointment was for me and my “wife” – and once referred to me as “him” to another member of staff. I was amused to realise she must have thought I was cross-dressing or transgender or something. I never bothered to put her right – if she hasn’t learnt after working in that sort of job, then she’s never going to learn that women’s voices aren’t all high, soprano or strident.
So, I propose that there’s more at work here than the simple fact that women’s voices are (on average) higher than men’s. That seems to be more a symptom than the cause and the way we’re disregarded goes beyond that. Men with high-pitched voices are regarded as frivolous in the entertainment industry – but in business, they’re still taken more seriously than women, even ones with a lower voice range. I won’t cite personal examples, because I’d risk embarrassing the men in question, but there have been a few. In the working world, I found that men could easily talk over a woman and no-one would blame him for it. The Miss Triggs cartoon cited by Mary Beard is only too true.
In the 20th Century that bastion of UK tradition, the BBC, were responsible for the chocolaty tones of news readers giving out news, both good and bad, in deep, reassuring tones. Nowadays, the “BBC Voice” is something of a joke, but it echoes through our society. They didn’t create it, just gave us a convenient label for the way some men speak. And thinking about the battles that women fought to be allowed to read “serious news” to the nation, media broadcasters haven’t been exactly willing to confront the issue.
So how should we try to rectify the imbalance? How can we tilt ourselves towards a more level playing field?
I don’t have a simple answer. Anything a woman says will be seen as further evidence that she doesn’t have anything useful to contribute, that she should not be listened to. “Oh, you’re always whining about men ignoring you.” I would ask that men start noticing the phenomenon – look out for a woman being shouted over in a meeting, etc. Even if you (a “he”) don’t intervene, it may make you more aware of how often it happens. Women, stand up and be counted when you hear someone complain she’s being ignored. (At least think about supporting her or maybe speaking up for yourself next time.)
This isn’t a trivial matter and it won’t be resolved in a hurry, whatever we do. The examples I’ve cited above all happened, but I’m not saying everyone thinks in a particular way, or that all men will shout down any woman who speaks. But even once would be too often – and I’ve seen it happen many more times than that.
I did suggest at the writers’ group I mentioned earlier, that we should have a time limit on each person’s reading. I even offered to bring an egg timer. This didn’t go down well. But I would propose that idea if I were chairing meetings where a few voices dominated in this way. Feel free to borrow the idea!
Like Mary Beard, I don’t advocate voice training as a solution. I’m sure it does some good for a few individuals, but that isn’t really the problem. The only way this will change is if all of us, men and women, realise we’re more inclined to listen to men, and make a point of hearing women when they do speak.
After all, we might have something worth saying.
We’ve all heard, “Children should be seen and not heard”, but an awful lot of men seem to think the same should be applied to women.
From Les Dawson’s jokes about his Mother-in-Law talking too much to Family Guy’s catchphrase, “Shut up, Meg” (Yes, I know. If you want to berate me, come up with something original, can’t you?), it’s a deep-rooted cliché that women should talk less.
Now, after a recent discussion online, I happened to spot this programme coming up on Sunday:
And I’m really looking forward to it. From my earliest years, I’ve been aware that females are judged to be not worth listening to when we express our opinions – my parents used to joke about it, in front of me and presumably when I wasn’t listening, too. (“We used to wish she’d start talking. Now we just wish she’d shut up.”)
The strange thing is that women are expected to be able and willing to make “small talk”. This derogatory term is never used to refer to men talking, however trivial the subject matter. Only women’s conversation is considered small. (Sometimes it’s even small when there are men involved, but there has to be a woman in the equation.)
We use different words to describe the behaviour of people according to their gender, from a very young age. For example:
Male………….Female
Assertive……..Bossy
Confident……..Pushy
Self-assured….Domineering
Emphatic………Aggressive
Forceful………Strident
A woman who raises any issue like this will find herself described as whining, whinging, grumpy, belligerent, difficult and (only too often) hormonal. The nearest a man ever comes to being described by that last term is if someone says “he’s a bit of a lad”. In the office environment, male hormones result in laddish, but accepted behaviour – female hormones are a weakness, something to be ashamed of.
A couple of weeks later, I was alone in the office and fed up of phones ringing unanswered, so I sent a copy of the same email to the same people, asking they route their desk phones to their mobiles.
Bear in mind, I copied and pasted his email. I sent exactly the same words to the same people.
I was reprimanded by the manager who’d thanked my male colleague, saying I was “being bossy” and “pretending to be a manager”.
On a disability note, I’ve been on the receiving end of comments like, “If you used your body for what it’s meant to do” far too many times. Male doctors who make it clear they feel they can dismiss many MS symptoms as “female problems”. It doesn’t help that the condition affects more women than men.
Back at the forthcoming programme. Mary Beard is a respected classicist historian, so I’m sure she will incorporate some excellent examples of “Oh Do Shut Up, Dear” from ancient sources as well as her own recent experiences on social media and in the populist press. I wonder if any of her detractors could rebuff her comments with one-tenth of her eloquence?
There is a lot of low-level sex discrimination in the UK, and one definite issue is the way that girls and women are criticised for expressing ourselves.
(It’s not just a gender issue – the same criticism is levelled at all sorts of minorities for daring to speak out. Drawing on my own experience, I’ve heard:
“What do you know about hillwalking?” (With a gesture towards my wheelchair.)
“You don’t know anything about sport!”
“How would you know how long it takes to walk there?”
And many other comments that my opinion is irrelevant, specifically due to a physical impairment.
And I’ve frequently been shouted down when I dared to express an opinion – often without my even saying enough for my views to be clear. I’ve been female all my life but visibly disabled only for the last 20 years, so I have a good perspective on the difference between gender bias and disability discrimination. I’m not saying one is worse than the other, and I know that other forms exist – but I can tell the difference between the two in many cases.)
I like to measure the ####-ism of a statement by reversing the polarity, or translating it to apply to a different flavour of discrimination. So – how would it sound if I made a similar joke, but made the subject my Father-in-Law? It wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t be funny because we don’t have the same cliché about men.
Or what if I made it a racist joke? I’d be (rightly) pilloried for saying it.
And yet we accept this sexist view of women (and a similar one about disabled people) without questioning it.
Rather than duplicate effort, I will watch the programme on Sunday and post another comment afterwards.