In her office, Aline Jalliet receives both female politicians and business leaders, but they all come to see her with the same question: how to make themselves heard when they speak? In his stimulating essay A voice of your own (Guy Trédaniel Editeur, 256 pages, 22.90 euros), this coach dissects the construction of women’s vocal identity, and explores these listening biases which maintain a form of male vocal domination. With, among others, the testimonies of Sandrine Rousseau, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, Elsa Zylberstein, Alexandra Lamy, but also trans women.
You talk about voice as a “blind spot of sexism”. What do you mean by that ?
Unlike men, women are very often attacked on their voice. Too high, too strong, too fragile, women’s voices are like a filter placed on their speech which prevents us from listening to what they say. If a woman has a voice that is too high, it is because she is “hysterical” ; if her voice is too loud, it is because she is violent; If her voice is too deep, it’s because she’s masculine…
When a man speaks, his voice signals credibility, legitimacy, truth in our ears. A single man’s voice can annihilate and erase the voice of a woman – and even of several women. Look at the Weinstein, Depardieu, Gérard Miller or Patrick Poivre d’Arvor cases. How many women do we need to speak to dethrone a single male voice? Faced with the risk this puts them in, many women remain silent. Either they seek to change their voice to finally be listened to, or they disguise it to please at all costs.
Is there a “woman’s voice” ?
In reality, no, but in our ears, yes! We associate the acute with the feminine. With the treble, we identify the woman overcome by emotions that she cannot control. When they want to gain credibility, women make their voices worse: this is what female voices have done since the 1950s, by lowering their fundamental (the base note) from one tone to one tone. and half. Some American women even adopt vocal frygiving their voice a slightly hoarse, fried grain, like Kim Kardashian.
Auditory stereotypes force women to identify with vocal markers of “femininity”, that is to say, to recognize themselves as women, they amplify the melodic aspect of their voice, attenuate its range … They sometimes adopt what we could call “the voice of care”: gentle, kind, kind – harmless. I am thinking of nurses or teachers. Also look at voice assistants like Alexa or GPS: often set by default to female voices, they reinforce the idea that women are at the service of others.
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