Speak up to be heard clearly in the workplace

If you pride yourself on having a deep, gravelly voice and imagine that this will help you be taken more seriously in the workplace, then you may need to think again. New research has shown that women who have a low-pitched, creaky tone of voice are considered both less competent and less educated, plus less trustworthy, as well as ultimately less hireable.

Researchers from the Fuqua School of Business at North Carolina’s Duke University in the US conducted an experiment whereby online listeners were randomly assigned to rate voices that alternated between something called ‘vocal fry’, which is the technical term for a low-pitched, creaky voice, and a normal tone.

The findings showed a strong aversion to voices exhibiting the vocal fry register, particularly among women. In fact, although vocal fry is perceived negatively in both sexes, women using it are judged far more harshly than men.

Vocal fry has grown more prominent in recent years among American females; Duke University’s researchers have hypothesised that this could be the result of women thinking that a deep voice is more dominant and erroneously concluding that it could therefore enable them to achieve more in the workplace.

However, given the barriers that female employees already tend to face in business, one of the scientists behind the study, Professor Bill Mayew, cautions that the results suggest “women should avoid vocal fry to maximise their chances of success in the jobs market.”