If you listen to radio programmes from the 1940s and 1950s you’ll notice some striking differences between the way that people spoke then and how we express ourselves today.
women today speak at a deeper pitch than their mothers or grandmothers would have done, thanks to the changing power dynamics between men and women.
The team found that the “fundamental frequency” had dropped by 23 Hz over five decades – from an average of 229 Hz (roughly an A# below middle C) to 206 Hz (roughly a G#). That’s a significant, audible difference.
The team also considered the fact that members of the more recent group from the 1990s were using the contraceptive pill, which could have led to hormonal changes that could have altered the vocal chords. Yet the drop in pitch remained even when the team excluded those women from their sample.
Instead, the researchers speculated that the transformation reflects the rise of women to more prominent roles in society, leading them to adopt a deeper tone to project authority and dominance in the workplace.
Women in the Netherlands consistently talk in deeper voices than women in Japan, for instance, and this seems to be linked to the prevailing gender stereotypes – independence versus powerlessness, for instance – in the different cultures (an inequality that is also reflected in a much larger gender pay gap in Japan).
