In Mary Beard’s “The Public Voice of Women”, she posits there’s more to the silencing of women’s voices than just misogyny. According to her, the notion that women have no business participating in public conversations dates back to the civilization of the Western world. This, she contends, is evident in the Western culture as portrayed in classic literature.
Beard draws from her wealth of knowledge as a professor of Classics and Ancient Literature to make an analogy between contemporary culture and the place of women when it comes to public speaking in ancient Rome and Greece. The complexity of her arguments boils down to understanding why women are unheard in society; the far-reaching consequences of that to social civility, and what could be done to salvage the situation.
Muthos: The Masculinity of Public Speaking
Beard notes the widespread assumption that the voice of women holds no authority like the voice of men. Citing classical writers, she illustrates that most of them represented feminine voices with cowardice, instability, and chaos.
She particularly named Greek orator and philosopher, Dio Chrysostom who imagined a grave calamity befalling a community if all the males thereof are deprived of their manly voices and afflicted to speak like women. With that, she explains that the word “muthos” has a concept to it. Although it is now taken to mean “myth”, it represented having the authority to make public speeches in Homeric Greek.
Essentially, the word was used to uphold the idea that women are not built for speaking in public: that speaking on societal issues is men’s business and especially so for men with prestigious social status. To show how the muthos concept was upheld in the Western world, Beard explored the classical world, pointing out several examples of women being silenced or/and punished for speaking.
Western Literature and the Silencing of Women
Mary Beard traced the earliest history of silencing women as captured in Western literature to Homer’s The Odyssey. She relates how Telemachus, Odysseus’s son cautioned his mother Penelope to shut up. Telemachus asked Penelope to take on the work meant for women as speaking is the business of men who wield the power of their households. With the Telemachus and Penelope story, Beard laid the foundation for a long demonstration that sought to expose how women’s voices were designated to not be heard in Western culture.
According to her, ancient Rome and Greece didn’t only silence women but engendered the notion that women aren’t well-suited for public speaking. Citing Ovid’s Metamorphoses as one of the most influential pieces of literature on Western culture, Beard used Io and Echo to exemplify the tradition of shooing women off public conversations. While the former was turned into a cow so she could only moo and not talk, the latter was rid of her own voice to only repeat the words of others.
Those are just a few instances that encapsulate the consequences women face for speaking. Maesia and Afrania were also referenced as they faced ill-treatment for speaking up. Maesia was labeled an androgynous being whereas Afrania was dismissed as a freak of nature who irritated everyone with her endless talks. Mary culled these examples from a Roman anthologist who lived in the first century AD.
When Women are Allowed to Speak
Although the classical world generally forbade women from public speaking, the outrage over women acting against this order is seldomly pardoned. But in such instances, it is found that such women were victims of ills like rape, or are solely speaking on matters that concern women.
To drive her point home, Beard alludes to Hortensia, a skilled orator of the late Roman Republic. She was allowed to partake in public speaking because she was seen as someone speaking for other women. In other words, women in rare situations were pardoned to speak in public. But then, they only get to speak on matters of interest to women. They are not to speak for men, come what may.
Other women like virtuous Lucretia from ancient Rome weren’t as “fortunate” as Hortensia. Lucretia was only heard after she was raped by Sextus Tarquinius. And sadly so, this was followed by her death as she committed suicide. Even as a victim of abuse, the sad chance to speak isn’t always guaranteed. For instance, Princess Philomela in Metamorphoses was raped and her tongue cut out.
The Prevailing Tradition of Gendered Speaking
Here, Mary Beard compares the silencing of women in Western culture to contemporary culture, politics, and other facets of life. She acknowledges that today’s society has rid itself of many prejudices against women in its political system. Nevertheless, maintains that contemporary notions about public speaking are rooted in classical traditions. For her, gender remains a crucial factor in the notions that have been sustained about speechmaking. It is the yardstick society employs in determining things like who should be heard, eloquence, and persuasive speaking. This is evident in words used in describing women’s speech compared to men’s. While men are noted for their deep voices, women are often said to be loud and harsh or whingeing.
These words matter because it essentially takes away not only the authority but even the humor in women’s speech. Ultimately pushing women away from the public sphere towards the domestic. On the other hand, men’s deep voice is taken to imply authority, the right to be heard. In all, Mary submits that the world today doesn’t know how to listen to a female voice; we don’t know how to hear the power and authority associated with the male voice when a woman is speaking.
Away from the nature of the feminine voice, the dismissal of what women have to say manifests in other forms. To cite an instance, Beard illustrates that an elderly woman participating in a public conversation might be told she is past her prime. This wouldn’t be the case for a man as his old age would be taken for advantage— he’d be regarded as someone with good judgment; speaking from his long years of experience and knowledge. Another form the silencing of women takes in the modern world is the threat and abuses they face for speaking. As exemplified by Beard’s experiences on Twitter where she was threatened with rape and murder, this is similar to Io and Echo’s story drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
In addition to the foregoing, the ancient and modern traditions of gendered speaking are similar in terms of when women are allowed to speak. Like Hortensia and Lucretia, Beard notes you will find that women of the modern world mostly speak about the abuse of women or for the sake of women’s interests. She refers to the collection of 100 great speeches in history, observing that speeches from women included in the list were mostly about women.
Misogyny and Gender Inequality
Having reckoned that the tradition of shutting women up exists in the modern world as in the ancient, Beard asserts it’s a social problem more than just misogyny as often labeled. To understand why the public voice of women has no regard, you must look beyond misogyny.
For her, the solution lies in examining the earliest proposition that surrounds the belief associated with authoritative speaking. These are the questions you must ask:
- What are the earliest factors in public speaking that signal authority and why is this so?
- How does society attach authority to a speaker when it does?
Asking those questions, Beard hopes we discover that learning how to talk like men—like Margaret Thatcher did—does little or nothing to fix the problem. Rather, it validates the notion that a woman taking part in public discussions is somewhat of an imposter encroaching on men’s world. If she doesn’t belong to this world; why then should she be taken seriously or heard? Therefore, Beard suggests we look at the problem from the perspective of the “faultlines and fractures that underlie dominant male discourse”. We must not only let women have their say, but also raise and sustain awareness around preconceived opinions that dismiss a woman’s voice as unauthoritative.
Until that is done, the exclusion of women as illustrated by Riana Duncan with her Miss Triggs classic Punch cartoon would persist. More than that, gender inequality would also persist as society would continue to resist women who involve themselves in areas traditionally seen as male’s domain.
Commentary
A similar sentiment regarding the masculinity of public speaking propounds that society holds an ideological bias against the female voice. Such propositions can be explored in Joshua Gunn’s 2010 essay, On Speech and Public Release, and Jennifer J. Jones’ research, Talk “Like a Man”: The Linguistic Styles of Hillary Clinton, 1992–2013.
Gunn argues that the bias against the feminine voice is deeply established in the earliest positive attributes attached to masculinity. On the other hand, Jones’ concluded in her study published by Cambridge University Press that “power speaks with a masculine voice”.
Gunn and Jones agree with Beard that what counts as authority in public speaking is closely associated with masculinity. Outside of adopting the masculine style of speaking, is there anything women could do for society to hear authority when they speak? Or are they fated to hope the awareness people like Beard are raising regarding the issue would eventually make a difference?
Furthermore, Beard pointed out that we attach more authority to low-pitched voices compared to high-pitched ones. She contended there is no neurological explanation for this. This idea is further explained in a 2012 study published by the National Library of Medicine. Primarily, the study examined how voice pitch influences the perception of leadership ability in males and females. Nevertheless, its discovery highlights elements that affirm Beard’s assertion:
- That in both males and females, humans prefer leaders who have low-pitched voices
- That we see women with low-pitched voices as more competent and trustworthy
The preference for low-pitched voices seems to explain why the words of a female speaker might not hold much authority. Be that as it may, how this became the order remains largely unknown. Mary Beard loosely tied it to the classical traditions we inherited.
Conclusion
The Public Voice of Women relates to other works of its author and her academic study at large. Mary Beard’s real-life experiences shaped her scholarship; most of which revolve around gender role conflict.
Beard casually suggested that men, especially those who are not high-flyers, also feel voiceless and take out the frustration that comes with that on women. Could this explain why attacks on women in politics are increasing across the globe?
