“First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you after which impulsively, you modify the world,” Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’s unusually deep baritone voice famously declared. Alongside her signature Steve Jobs-inspired black turtleneck and wide, unblinking eyes, Holmes’s low voice was a key a part of her public persona, making her sound more like a member of her high profile board of directors and investors (Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz et al.) than the young woman she was. 

Many individuals imagine, nevertheless, that Holmes’s voice was as fraudulent as her company turned out to be: a put-on inflection to offer off a more authoritative impression and a part of the package she used to scam her strategy to the highest. In a trailer for Theranos series The Dropout, star Amanda Seyfried is shown practising her latest voice within the mirror. “That is an inspiring step forward,” she repeats again and again in increasingly deep tones. 

Holmes isn’t the one famous woman to have reportedly modified her voice in an effort to succeed professionally in a male-dominated arena. Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher is said to have deepened her natural voice, to the purpose of damaging her vocal chords, after being advised that it was “schoolmarmish”, “bossy” and “dangerous to passing sparrows”. Thatcher’s publicity adviser Gordon Reece was reportedly overheard coaching her with the phrase, ‘The socialists must learn that enough is enough.’

On average, women speak at a better pitch than men; about an octave higher. The common range of an adult woman spans from 165 to 255 Hz, while for a person it’s 85 to 155 Hz. It’s because during puberty, men experience a surge of testosterone which causes their vocal cords to elongate and thicken resulting in deeper pitches. Meanwhile, women have a bigger gap between their vocal cords which allows more air to go through, giving their voices a “breathy” quality. 

This shouldn’t pose any problems in and of itself, but as a gaggle now we have – mostly unconsciously – assigned social characteristics to the pitches of voices. A 2012 study found participants were more prone to vote for political candidates with lower pitched voices which they perceived as more socially-dominant. Researchers in Canada found that individuals “trusted lower-pitched female voices more normally” (although not in a mate-poaching context), while in 2016, research suggested people find men and girls with lower voices to be more authoritative and dominant. These perceptions have led to things like voice deeping procedures which surgery clinics advertise for individuals who need to feel “more confident and successful of their personal and skilled lives”.

Relating to their skilled lives, women in the general public eye have long struggled to succeed due to their higher-pitched voices. In 1926, a survey found a ratio of 100 to 1 people preferred male radio hosts to female ones who they found “shrill” (a word often used to criticise women, most recently and notably Hillary Clinton). “A girl without bass registers in her voice would find it very hard to get on in broadcasting unless she was exceptionally beautiful,” news anchor Jon Snow once said.

“It’s led people to underestimate me or make assumptions about me. My voice is soft, so that they presume I’m” – Mia

“It’s led people to underestimate me or make assumptions about me. My voice is soft, so that they presume I’m,” says journalist Mia*. In her 30s, Mia’s breathy, self-described “candy floss” voice often leads cold-callers to ask her if ‘mummy or daddy are home?’ “A soft, young-sounding voice has strong connotations of gentleness, inexperience, even a scarcity of intelligence,” she says, adding that for this reason she consciously tries to maintain her voice lower when conducting interviews. 

The truth is, of the six women interviewed for this piece – ranging in age from mid-20s to late-30s, in fields spanning finance, promoting, journalism and the charity sector, all of whom felt they’d higher than average pitched voices – five reported that they purposefully deepened their voices in skilled environments. Amongst the explanations given were to sound “more calm”, “on top of things”, “competent” and “cooler”.

“Nobody with a high-pitched voice ever sounds cool and skilled, and I worry a whole lot of the time it comes across as annoying,” says Jennifer* who’s in her 20s and an editor at a weekly magazine. Jennifer says she fears a mixture of her youth, style and voice has led her to be taken less seriously at work, along with her high-pitched voice giving the impression that she is younger than she is. “It’s particularly noticeable once I’m in a room stuffed with men,” she says.

Like Jennifer, Victoria*, who works in finance, is conscious of the ways she stands out in knowledgeable environment dominated by men. “A whole lot of them are old-fashioned bankers they usually are very non-welcoming. They don’t prefer it when there’s someone within the room who’s different to them,” she says. “They wish to keep things inside their boys club.” In addition to putting on a lower-pitched voice in meetings, to mix in Victoria makes an effort to not dress overly feminine, tie her hair up, wear glasses but not perfume and keep her body language masculine.

“Sounding such as you belong will be really necessary,” says Dr Jillian O’Connor, an assistant professor of psychology at Queen’s University whose research focuses on how vocal traits influence our perceptions of individuals. Over 1000’s of years of evolution, Dr O’Connor explains, humans have learned to make use of the voice, including pitch, accent and speech patterns, to find out whether someone is a friend or a foe, whether or not they belong to our group or in the event that they’re from one other, potentially threatening, group. “It’s about social cohesion where being accepted by your group members could be a matter of survival,” she says.  

Although mostly not a matter of survival, subconsciously identifying members of our group still plays a major role in our social interactions. “Oh, they sound like me, they’re probably a member of my group, we will discuss more confidential or private information without worrying concerning the potential cost,” as Dr O’Connor puts it. Nobody desires to be on the surface of the group, especially relating to our careers, so we’d find yourself playing down the features that make us different with the intention to fit in additional.

One other matter of survival is that pitch could be very often linked to size and due to this fact sound carries a whole lot of necessary information: think the difference between just a little mouse squeak and a deep lion roar. Lower pitches often indicate strength, size and dominance, while higher pitches are related to small size and youth, and sometimes are perceived as more submissive. “We will take into consideration physical dominance by way of someone who’s big and muscular and will protect you, or social dominance by way of someone that we take heed to, that we see as a pacesetter,” says Dr O’Connor. Those two perceptions often go hand in hand, and the lines get blurred. “It’s each social and ingrained, it’s really hard to disentangle the 2,” she says. “If culture does have a job here [in linking deep pitch to power], what it’s doing is reinforcing the biologically based perceptions.”

“I believe a whole lot of it’s perception of what power is, and power is a lower voice” – Sylvie Lui 

Biology also comes into play after we take into consideration how our voices change with different emotions. Many individuals find that once they are nervous or upset, their voice becomes higher and more shrill as the strain of their body is reflected of their voice. “The emotional response within the body is to tighten all of the muscles which suggests the voice starts to shoot up,” explains voice coach Sylvie Lui. Relaxed voices, meanwhile, will often sit on the lower end of our range. Being calm and on top of things are sometimes seen as desirable leadership qualities, while more emotional responses are linked (by men) to irrationality. “Whenever you’re lowering your voice, what happens is that it feels like you may have more grounding and it feels like there’s a calmer assertiveness,” Lui says. “I believe a whole lot of it’s perception of what power is, and power is a lower voice.” 

In her job as a voice coach, Lui works primarily with professionals across executive, senior and mid-level management at firms including JP Morgan, Deloitte, and Deutsche Bank. Often male-dominated environments, Lui says the ladies working at these firms come to her believing that they aren’t being taken seriously and that having a lower-pitched voice will give them a greater sense of authority within the workplace. “What they try to do is show up in a way that these people will hear them,” she says. 

Because ultimately, we will’t discard the influence that centuries of patriarchy have had on how we predict of dominance, authority, and competence and who wields them. In western society, it’s men who’ve been the leaders, who’ve been within the workplace, who’ve established the culture and who’ve dictated what power feels like. Sometimes it just comes back to the proven fact that “some people will trust men greater than women”, as Lui says.