As we once again celebrate International Women’s Day, I am struck how the voices of women in the West have changed so drastically over the last 60 years.
Here in the UK, since the advent of the pill, in 1961, radically changing women’s position in society as they gained power over their own reproductive systems and so by default, their own bodies, following, by only 33 years, the universal vote, we have experienced the biggest social change and move to towards women’s equality, there has ever been…
This has had a huge effect on our voices.
Regard the voices of the women in the old black and white movies, high pitched and seemingly completely detached from the power house of their bodies.
As women have gained economic and so social power, our voices have dropped into our bodies, our feet have got larger (!) and our voices deeper and more powerful, as we are used to standing on our own two feet and expect to be and assume that we will be, heard.
A very obvious example of this was Margaret Thatcher. When she became Prime Minister, by a series of surprises, she still spoke in that very high pitched socially acceptable ‘nice girls 1950’s sort of voice’, totally unsuited to bellowing across the dispatch box in the House of Commons to a crowd of braying men who had been born when the world was still pink (the British Empire was depicted in pink on British maps).
She very wisely knew she had to do something about this… and quickly.
Her aides contacted the RSC and asked the renowned Cicely Berry to help her project like an actress so that her voice could fill the House. In other words – she asked for Public Speaking Lessons.
Cicely wasn’t that keen on the teaching the leader of the Conservative party so she passed the job on to her assistant – my voice coach – and he taught her how to resonate her voice in different parts of her body. Over a matter of weeks her voice became lower and more powerful.
Because of the urgency, this was achieved in a matter of weeks, but it is a wonderful illustration of what has happened naturally over the last 56 years.
Young women now have deeper, sexy voices BUT you can notice in certain groups of society in this country where religious culture does not permit sexual equally, the female voices are still light, high pitched and less powerful, sending a strong signal that they do not have economic or social power.
