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Voice Quality and Gender Stereotypes (Matar et al., 2016)
journal contribution
posted on 2022-02-23, 18:40 authored by Nayla Matar, Cristel Portes, Leonardo Lancia, Thierry Legou, Fabienne BaiderPurpose: Women with Reinke’s edema (RW) report being
mistaken for men during telephone conversations. For this
reason, their masculine-sounding voices are interesting for
the study of gender stereotypes. The study’s objective is to
verify their complaint and to understand the cues used in
gender identification.
Method: Using a self-evaluation study, we verified RW’s
perception of their own voices. We compared the acoustic
parameters of vowels produced by 10 RW to those
produced by 10 men and 10 women with healthy voices
(hereafter referred to as NW) in Lebanese Arabic. We
conducted a perception study for the evaluation of RW,
healthy men’s, and NW voices by naïve listeners.
Results: RW self-evaluated their voices as masculine and
their gender identities as feminine. The acoustic parameters
that distinguish RW from NW voices concern fundamental
frequency, spectral slope, harmonicity of the voicing signal,
and complexity of the spectral envelope. Naïve listeners
very often rate RW as surely masculine.
Conclusions: Listeners may rate RW’s gender incorrectly.
These incorrect gender ratings are correlated with acoustic
measures of fundamental frequency and voice quality.
Further investigations will reveal the contribution of each
of these parameters to gender perception and guide
the treatment plan of patients complaining of a gender
ambiguous voice.
