Emma Watson Speech Analysis

Renowned British actress and activist for the feminist movement, Emma Watson, in her speech to the United Nations, “HeForShe,” argues that gender discrimination is a plague to human civilization. Watson’s purpose is to sway the audience that gender inequality has to come to an end, with the support of men and women as advocates for egalitarianism. Additionally, she enlightens the audience that the problem originated from political affairs, the economy, and social disparity. Watson creates a compassionate tone in order to convey men, specifically those who negatively perceived feminism or did not think that feminist issues affected them. Nevertheless, Watson’s speech is ineffectively persuasive due to the poor description she formulated

Thus, ensuring Watson to stipulate: “My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl” (1), which was an effort to provoke a specific emotion from the audience (Pathos), and to imply that her life did not encounter gender stereotypes. Nonetheless, Watson failed to understand that the audience would not relate to her childhood descriptions, bearing in mind that every human being grows up an a unique environmental setting, there are those that would embrace different perspectives of gender, and the audience would not possess the same education as Watson. Also, there was an absent of a sentimental tone when unfolding her childhood to the audience, which would not evoke an emotion to her audience. As a final point, Watson is unable to generate her childhood reminiscences into compelling trials, meaningful moments, or biographical events. For example, Watson offers another short account of her childhood that is supposed to draw a parallel to feminism: “My mentors didn’t assume that I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day” (1), even so, the small description lacks an expressive tone, and there is a possibility that the audience would discover the short account monotonous, unstimulating, and not

For instance, Watson provides a concept that requires more confirmation: “It will take seventy-five years, or for me to be nearly 100, before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work” (2), there was no indication that her hypothesis makes a good testable comparison using empirical evidence (Logos), and there are no details of the connection between the standards of two or more variables. Consequently, this decreased Watson’s credibility to the audience, which will lead to further examining of her argument, and whether she should have the right to deliberate about gender inequality. Additionally, Watson does not take into consideration of the physical, mental, and natural capabilities of men and women, which obviously indicates that she needs to conduct more investigation to her theory. Lastly, Watson should offer more proof in her statement, rather than by attempting to make the audience feel particular emotions, which does not meet the requirements of the logical