“I want you to stick two fingers between your teeth vertically, then say a line from a nursery rhyme.”

Biting my hand while trying to talk is less comfortable than lying on my back huffing out breaths to a count of 10, which is what I have been doing for the past half an hour, but I do as I am told. I can’t remember a single nursery rhyme. “The moon is made of green cheese,” I mumble. “Louder,” instructs Kate Lee, a former actor whose voice is vibrant yet relaxed. I try again. And again. It is hard to talk when you are gagged. “Now take out your fingers and repeat the phrase. Listen to the difference.”

Apart from being a lot easier to say, the words come out with surprising oomph. They sound powerful. Authoritative. You might even believe the moon was made of green cheese. “This is how much energy you need to use,” says Lee. “If you can do that, your voice should feel more alive, more energised.”

A few weeks before, an invitation had dropped into my inbox. I report on family law and child protection, and I was being asked to give a lecture in honour of the late Bridget Lindley, the principal legal adviser to the charity Family Rights Group, who had battled to uphold the human rights of parents and children in the family courts. The inaugural lecture, I recalled, was given by a senior appeal court judge. I am a jobbing freelancer. But you don’t turn down an invitation like that, so I pressed “send” on my acceptance email before I bottled it.

Then I started worrying: about researching and writing the equivalent of a mini-dissertation; about speaking persuasively in public; especially about my voice.

As a journalist specialising in education and social affairs, I sometimes give talks, chair events and deliver training. I often relish the performance aspect of live presentations, but, in truth, I am not confident about my voice. It seems to lack authority and gravitas and sounds a bit thin and high. Even – I cringe at this – a bit girly (I note my own value judgment of the adjective). Also, when I listen back to recordings, I hear a repeated “tch” sound. It is a distracting verbal tic that seems to denote nervousness. It is strange, because that is not how I feel.

Hence Lee, a communications coach who trains some of the country’s best-known broadcasters. And hence research into why I am worried at all.

‘Biting my hand while trying to talk is less comfortable than lying on my back huffing out breaths to a count of 10’ ... Louise Tickle takes instruction from voice coach Kate Lee. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

I discover almost immediately that my concerns are not unusual – and that they are felt particularly keenly by women, often for good reason. “There has been lots of prejudice about women’s voices,” says Anne Karpf, a sociologist and the author of The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent. In the world of broadcasting, for example, “there have been a vast variety of reasons put forward over time to exclude women from the airwaves”. These range from the Daily Express saying in 1928 that listeners felt women’s voices were monotonous to the Sunday Dispatch saying in 1945 that women were too emotive in their delivery. From too little personality in their voices to not enough, women can’t win.

“You say to me that your voice is not authoritative,” says Karpf. “That speaks to me of all the ways that women have not been allowed a voice in the metaphorical sense.”

This prompts me to do some reading about women’s voices in history. Disapproval of women articulating their opinions is ingrained across cultures and across time. In her bestselling essay Women & Power: A Manifesto, Mary Beard gives her readers a depressing history lesson about how classical society abominated the very idea of women speaking in public. This can happen insidiously, even if not through a statutory ban: on the landmark 1963 civil rights march on Washington, black female activists were given no opportunity by organisers to address the crowd; no woman was trusted to read the television news as a regular long-term newsreader on a national programme in the UK until Angela Rippon caused a sensation in 1975.

Beard suggests we are not comfortable with women speaking publicly even now. “Take the language we still use to describe the sound of women’s speech … in making a public case, fighting their corner, in speaking out, what are women said to be? ‘Strident’; they ‘whinge’ and they ‘whine’,” she writes. I am reminded suddenly of King Lear’s description of his daughter Cordelia: “Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.” However softly and gently she phrased her opinions, it didn’t do her much good in the end, I think, crossly.

At the coaching company Vocal Process, voice expert Gillyanne Kayes says: “I often hear from female clients that: ‘My voice is too quiet, I’m not considered to be assertive.’” She even had to teach one client to interrupt deliberately. “She was simply a very softly spoken woman,” says Kayes. The way we use our voices is not predetermined or fixed, she explains: the average pitch range used within a population moves around over time and is influenced by culture. “What I think we need to do is find a strong, clear sound within our individual pitch range,” she says. American speakers tend to use volume for emphasis; British speakers tend to want to use melody. “That’s what I’d be looking for – having the ability to vary within your pitch range without going into a histrionic sound.”

I tell Karpf that I suspect men benefit automatically from having lower voices with a deeper timbre than women do. She agrees. Studies have shown that we perceive deep, resonant voices – such as those of Judi Dench or Mariella Frostrup – as attractive. However, in women, “that huskiness means they also sound very sexy, which undercuts the idea of authority”, Karpf says.

‘Having sufficient breath and the ability to regulate its flow gives you more options about where in your natural register to “place” a phrase for best impact.’ Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

There has long been pressure on women in positions of authority to deepen their voices. Margaret Thatcher is thought to have taken voice lessons to lower hers, possibly further than her natural range easily allowed: in the latter part of her career, her voice sounded distinctly strained. “Women politicians have it very tough,” Karpf says. “If you look at Theresa May, she exhibits a phenomenon I call ‘tears in the voice’ – as if there’s something trapped in her throat – and it makes her uncomfortable to listen to. Emily Thornberry is lucky: she has a very rich, resonant voice. As a former barrister, she’s also used to being assertive with her voice and it’s a tremendous asset.”

I start to research the lecture and embark on Lee’s exercises – a lot of controlled breathing into and out of the diaphragm appears to be vital, since having sufficient breath and the ability to regulate its flow gives you more options about where in your natural register to “place” a phrase for best impact. We also work on what Lee calls “being grounded”. I visualise the pressing of my feet into the floor, as with salsa dancing, as opposed to skittering about, ballet-style, on pointe. All this helps – a lot. But I am beginning to acknowledge, with some discomfort, a feeling I had tried to bury: insecurity about my right to take up space in a room. This creates an immediate vulnerability.

Journalists, even those who specialise in particular subjects, are generalists, not experts. Their job is to report what other people – the true experts – think. What right do I have to talk about family law to senior judges, lawyers, academics and directors of children’s services who have dedicated their lives to thinking about how best to protect children? Will my talk be rubbish? Will I – very visibly – fail? I am battling internally with a basic question: do I have the authority to speak?

Will my talk be rubbish? Will I – very visibly – fail? Do I have the authority to speak?

“Everybody feels that. And, yes, absolutely, speaking in front of an audience is an honour,” says Sylvia Baldock, a professional speaker, trainer and coach. Overcoming that insecurity, she says, “is about establishing your credibility up front”. At this point, Baldock doesn’t seem all that bothered about my voice. Instead, she asks why I am so fascinated by family law. When I answer – about how I was sent to court one day to see a woman apply for a non-molestation order without the benefit of legal aid and found myself sucked in – she pauses.

Then she says, firmly: “I’d like you to go a bit deeper.”

Feeling embarrassed, I find myself telling her why I really care – and I realise that I am going to have to rewrite my opening section, in a more truthful way than I had contemplated. I need to get personal.

This makes me uncomfortable. Reporters don’t often, and shouldn’t often, talk about themselves. Our job is to report the world. But Baldock is adamant that this is different. “You need that powerful opening. People feel that they have a relationship with you then. Your history … it’s what has all led to your work on this.”

I write my new introduction and understand immediately how my motivation to explore the ways in which the law affects families – so often rendering them powerless against the implacable authority of the state – is what will drive the lecture’s content. My childhood was immeasurably better than those of most of the people whose stories I try to tell, but I know the anguish of yearning for an adored parent, because we lived in different countries after my parents split up. I am sure my deep suspicion of authority is shaped by my fury, between the ages of eight and 12, at having no control over decisions that caused me damage and immense distress.

Once I feel I have something useful to say, and therefore a right to speak, much of my insecurity about my voice drops away. Is this a particularly female way to approach speaking in public or is it just me, I wonder? I am still not sure, but I sense that it stems from a fear of being shamed. The idea of someone thinking “she’s not as good as she thinks she is” – or, worse still, “she’s not as good as we thought she was” – provokes a hot flood of anticipated embarrassment. It is not OK just to do all right. I have to do well – ideally, very well.

I give the lecture. Throughout, I breathe into my diaphragm. Three minutes in, my legs start to shake and I realise that I am fluffing at least one word per page. But I discipline myself not to rush. Rushing is for people who don’t believe an audience is interested in what they have to say.

I keep breathing. I have no idea if I use my full vocal range, but I don’t think the annoying “tch” is so apparent. After long hours of thinking and reading, writing and rewriting, I finally believe my words are worth listening to.

I have also come to believe that, as long as my voice conveys what I want to say so people understand, that is what matters. Not whether the noise that comes out of my mouth is thin or high or girly.

• This article was amended on 9 April 2018. An earlier version said that in 1975 Angela Rippon became the UK’s first female national newsreader. Rippon was the first woman to hold a position as regular long-term newsreader on a national news programme.