What is it about?
Many scientists and clinicians want to know what factors make a listener think a voice is masculine or feminine. This review evaluates the questions, 1) who are the participants for these studies, and 2) how are these studies being conducted? We found that participants are primarily white young adults who speak General American English or that they are unreported. Almost all the ways that these studies were conducted involved quantitative, numeric scales and most used recorded speech samples that were at least a full word long.
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Why is it important?
Our main findings show that there is room in the future to increase the span of demographic representation in this area of science. Most clients who seek this service are not interacting with young, white adults as their primary communication partners. It is possible that different dialects, age ranges, and other background information might play into how gender is both expressed and perceived. Additionally, it is possible that only numeric scales to rate gender might be excluding something important.
Perspectives
In a climate that is increasingly hostile towards any hint of "diversity" or working to include someone other than the majority, this work has transformed into both scientific inquiry and a timely, healthy amount of doubt that work in diversity, equity, and inclusion is a waste of time. As healthcare providers (and researchers informing healthcare), speech-language pathologists and related professionals have a duty to make sure that all of our patients are as tended to and cared for as we can. I'm grateful to share this work and hopefully provide a piece of that puzzle for someone.
Collin Brice
University of Cincinnati
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Demographic Representation and Current Practices of Speech-Gender Perception Studies: A Scoping Review, Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, July 2025, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2025_persp-24-00270.
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