The Longtime Disparity of Female Voices
My entire life, I have considered myself lucky to be in fields surrounded by other women. Women who were infinite in the ways they existed, of whom I canât credit enough for the work they devoted to what they cared about.Â
Yet, it was always the very fact of this work that has struck me. I often joke with my friends that we cannot think of a man in our lives who is equal in success when compared to the women we know, and while it is not to say that we deny the achievements of everyone, there is a completely disproportionate amount of work that every girl, woman, and âstrong, independent, best-in-her classâ figure puts into her commitments. Now, more than ever, the conversation of female leadership roles has hit a head, and each day, there is a new thought piece or substack or something that is devoted to the inequity that is still very much underlying female-dominated spaces, no matter how many gender-quotas are hit.Â
In the school I attended prior to St. Andrews, my yearâs student body consisted of 80 girls and 20 boys. The presence of female voices, on a numerical and completely objective level, always outnumbered. Yet it was this very presence that made the voices so much smaller. It was the first time I noticed this paradox in my own practice: why was it that the more female voices there were, the quieter they became?
In my early teenage years, even before I attended that school, I was always someone who spoke. Too often, some might say, with jokes dating back to my early childhood of the ways I wouldnât pause in between my sentences because another one was always on the way out. I had a voice that I never thought would go away, a shameless love for public speaking and a strong lack of a quiver when I asked a question to whatever guest speaker I was trying to impress..Â
And yet, the older I have gotten, the more I have grown up, that voice has gone away. The things that defined the essence of how I thought of myself disappeared. What once was a flawless delivery became a trip on a curb, a fall into shaking hands and constant fear that whatever I would try to say wouldnât be enough. I had never acknowledged how I felt, until I turned 20, and realised the culture that created this.Â
It is no secret that St. Andrews is very female-dominated in the student body population. With multiple women-only societies and constant opportunities for female voices to be heard, St. Andrews succeeds each time with hitting the stride. And yet, I have never before experienced a place in which the culture strays so far away from actually listening to the voices that there seems to be so much effort put into.Â
Of course, every single experience differs, and I know I am not speaking for everyone. But, it seems that it has become easier than ever for womenâs voices to become diluted in a place where they have every opportunity to be so much more potent. Even those who are most conscious of knowing their voice, their worth, and their capability fall to the complex that because there are more women speaking, everyone else can understand so much less. It is no secret to any of us the amount of work it takes to be taken seriously, and for most women I have been lucky enough to speak on this topic about, that amount of work is the fine line that divides the little inkling of success we had to fight blood, sweat, and tears for, between the loss of the 13 year old girl that thought her âwell-spoken for her ageâ identity would never go away. From society leadership positions to moments in a tutorial, to the small things like an invitation to an event or a table at a pub, the ability for women to influence a decision of many seems to shrink every day.Â
It isnât just in our bubble, either. Historically, womenâs voices have been warped. In the early days of radio, the technology used for sound receptors often thinned higher-frequency female voices while enriching lower-frequency male tones. This taught early listeners to associate lower pitches with authority, further triggering the term âshrill,â something that has stuck with media receptors even today. Research has further noted that womenâs voices have deepened over recent decades in some countries, perhaps as a subconscious response to this effect. Speech habits such as vocal fries, uptalk, breathiness, and âbaby-dollâ vocal registers have also had deep historical roots in the media representations of women. Public radio hosts like Ira Glass of This American Life have openly pointed out that they use extensive vocal fry in their broadcasts, yet almost never receive complaints. Meanwhile, their female colleagues are routinely targeted by listeners, claiming their voices are “unprofessional” or “unintelligent.â While the world has begun to place women in a speaking role, they have criticised them in complete alignment.Â
 The ânominal problem is excess,âwrote author Jordan Kisner in The Cut in 2016. âThe voice is too something- too loud, nasal, breathy, honking, squeaky, matronly, whispered. It reveals too much of some identity, it overflows its bounds. The excess in turn points to whatâs lacking: softness, power, humor, intellect, sexiness, seriousness, coolness, warmth.â
This is something that has not gone away. I notice in my own speaking patterns, from my filler words to aversion of eye contact, my overuse of hand gestures to distract from what I am saying, from the dreaded âvocal fryâ that I find myself speaking in. The moment I realised speaking more than the boys wasnât a good thing, I found myself making it so much worse. And so, I had to ask myself: why was it that having no voice became better to me than simply having a strong one?Â
Within our generation, feminism has always been accessible. We know that women deserve equal pay and should be in elected leadership roles; we know that we can advocate for what we care about and enjoy a night out at the same time. Our worth is engrained into us from a young age. Which is, to say, what makes this so much deeper. Because women are so empowered, for the first time in history, social mannerisms have become embedded in us to trivialize the fact that we are able to say what we want to say. As subconscious as it is, voice is political.Â
I remember when I had a voice, before I changed everything about it. I remember when I spoke in classrooms and hallways and groups of people and had an opinion. We are trained to apologise for interrupting or ending our point with âso⊠yeah,â as if what we were saying wasnât as supported with evidence as everything that is said by the man that chooses to speak first. We are trained to speak in run-on-sentences, rather than refuse to be interrupted. And thus, I realise it is not time to make my voice deeper, more serious, to mute my âhabitsâ or try and shrink the things I have to say. It is time I acknowledge that surface level empowerment is not all that I have to offer.Â
Perhaps the point is not to find our voices again, but to stop asking why they changed in the first place. To recognise that the girl who spoke without hesitation was never naĂŻve, nor was the woman who learned to question every word she said somehow more mature. She was simply learning to exist in a world that continues to make women conscious of the space they occupy. And if there is anything I have learned from the women around me, it is that we should not have to become quieter to make room for one another, nor louder to prove that we deserve to be heard. We deserve a culture in which our voices are not measured against one another, but valued for what they have to offer. Because the problem was never that there were too many women speaking. It was that we were taught to hear them as noise. And perhaps the most radical thing we can do now is to listen, to ourselves and to each other, without apology.