The right to squeak

It’s probably tendentious to say that the feminine voice is a feminist issue, but let me say it anyway. I have, I may say, a voice that spans the vocal spectrum from soft to strident — oh all right, shrill, but I never quite appreciate what a problem it is until I do the odd bit of radio. Really, I should stick to print.

Last year, I took part in a fun Radio 4 programme that sought to replicate a newspaper leader conference in a BBC radio studio. In theory, the editorial line on this particular programme is decided by the strength of argument. But it was only when the thing kicked off that I realised this was not entirely the case. What clinches the matter when it comes to winning an argument on the radio, as in life, is whether you can make your voice heard. And it was here that I realised, not for the first time, that women are never going to win when it comes to making ourselves heard; for most of us, our voices are too light, too weedy. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I found that I was mercilessly outclassed by a group of men who would always be able to cut right across me because their voices carried and mine didn’t.

Andrew Rawnsley, the notional editor, has a splendid bass voice, against which no one else’s stands a chance. The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire was heavyweight vocally; if he interrupts, well, you just give way. The other men’s timbre was slightly less assertive, though the Times’s Daniel Finkelstein can certainly make himself heard. In short, me and the other woman present, the Guardian’s Ros Taylor, didn’t have a hope of shouting anyone else down, though Ros was too well-mannered to try.