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I'm curious based on would-be standard samples such as

  • provided on Wikipedia; compare the same [male] speaker there trying to show the difference between (alveolo-palatal) ɕ and (palato-alveolar) ʃ.

  • provided on a Polish university page; of the three voices (one male, two female) trying to show the difference between ɕ (again) but retroflex non-palatalized ʂ (this time)... again I find the male voice (#2) making the least distinction between these.

So I'm curious if these are just my possibly biased observations based on a very limited sample and possibly my "untrained ears", or if there's something more general in this and males indeed have more trouble with alveolo-palatal pronunciation? Are there any surveys of speakers on these putative sex/gender differences with respect to ability to make a clear[er] pronunciation of alveolo-palatal?

Or if this is a bad tack, what are the physiological differences that make the "best", i.e. most clearly distinguishable alveolo-palatal sounds? (Something to do with lower lip or teeth, I might suspect.)

the gods from engineering
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It is just your biases. Wikipedia files are strongly different. But there are both female voices on a Polish site, that substitute [s̠] and [sʲ] (with more lax, more sibilant pronunciation than a plain [sʲ]) in inlaut and auslaut positions (proşie, wieś) for [ɕ]. So situation is opposite to your vision: not males, but females more often use another allophones for [ɕ]. Today for Polish example only.

T1nts
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  • Assuming we're talking about the same site, for proşie 1st female (Ola) sounds indeed somewhat towards [ʃ], but the male (2nd voice) seem even more towards [s̠]. I'd rate only the 3rd voice (2nd female Ania) as a clear [ɕ]. For wieś, I'd rate the 1st two voices as around [ʃ], again with the male more towards [s̠], only the 3rd voice again as more clear [ɕ]. – the gods from engineering Dec 02 '21 at 11:12
  • Have you any kind of /ɕ/ in your native language!? For me, here only male voice close to any allophonic realisation of it. – T1nts Dec 03 '21 at 20:52
  • none. I'm taking as yardstick/expectation a couple of YouTube videos on Chinese pronunciation of [ɕ] vs [s̠], e.g. https://youtu.be/rUlnp0wm5dk?t=73 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coTlaHzLWXc The way the guy there pronounces is actually quite what I expect. What's your native tongue, by the way? – the gods from engineering Dec 03 '21 at 21:23