While most of us actually hear female voices more clearly, men’s brains hear women’s voices first as music. But it’s not music. It’s someone giving them a honey-do list. So the brain goes into overdrive trying to analyze what is being said.
Bottom line: Men have to work harder deciphering what women are saying because they use the auditory part of the brain that processes music, not human voices. Men’s brains are not designed to listen to women’s voices. It’s not the pitch of the woman’s voice, but rather the vibration and number of sound waves that cause the problem, notes Discovery News.
But guys have no trouble at all hearing each other because men use a much simpler brain mechanism at the back of the brain to decipher another man’s voice and recognize it as speech.
http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/men/package.jsp?floc=DC-topb&name=fte/womenspeak/womenspeak
While that may be the case according to Discovery News I will relate the case of my father. In his early 90’s and quite hard of hearing he could not understand what virtually any female was saying to him but if his nurses and other females talked right in his ear and lowered their voices as much as possible they could be understood by him.
Most people, male and female, lose their high frequency hearing as we age, men faster than women, for some reason..........
A New Ring Tone Teachers Can’t Hear:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-new-ring-tone-teachers-cant-hear/