#GAReads | A Century of 'Shrill': How Bias In Technology Has Hurt Women's Voices
photo credit: Lt. Fox, United States Army Signal Corps [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
“A Century of 'Shrill': How Bias In Technology Has Hurt Women's Voices”:
With the large number of women running for President this year, the word “shrill” is enjoying a resurgence in the national vocabulary, following its previous heyday, as an insult hurled at Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential campaign. This spike in usage is hardly a revelation; women who speak publicly and challenge authority have long been dismissed as “shrill” or “grating.” What’s less widely understood is how the design of the technology that transmits human voices has shaped this gendered invective since the dawn of the broadcast era: everything from microphones to modes of transmission have been optimized for lower voices.