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A Rhetorical Analysis Of Hillary Clinton's Struggle For Women

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The year of 1995 was a pivotal time regarding women’s rights. It was also a time in which society was rapidly changing due to increased activism, more global connections, and technological advancements. As the first lady at the time, Hillary Clinton was invited to speak at the fourth United Nations women’s conference in Beijing China, discussing the struggle for women’s equality. In her 1995 speech, Clinton asserted the importance of acknowledging women’s rights as human rights through the use of emphasis and appeals.
The use of emphasis as a rhetorical strategy in Clinton’s speech was aimed at highlighting the injustices that women faced during that time and the significance of treating women with respect. Clinton was able to achieve this …show more content…

Clinton wanted to connect to her audience effectively on an emotional level and did this through the use of imagery. She wanted the audience to be able to picture the hardships that women faced at the time. It’s easy to hear that women are discriminated against, but Clinton knows that it’s another thing to actually understand what the discrimination entails. Throughout paragraph 12, Clinton mentioned specific struggles that women were enduring such as, “Women also are dying from diseases…” and, “they are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.” By including specific hardships, Clinton was able to pull on the audience's heart strings. The audience was able to picture women struggling through said struggles and Clinton might have led some to feel partially responsible for said hardships. The audience was able to connect their emotions with Clinton’s message of respecting women's rights. After Clinton created this emotional connection, it allowed her audience to think about Clinton’s words and the emotions that they were feeling. They were able to come to a realization that they impacted the way society was handling the acknowledgement of women’s rights. Oftentimes, people aren’t always aware of their actions and the effect that they can have on people. Clinton wanted her audience to be in touch with themselves and understand that their actions affect society, even if it doesn't seem like it. Clinton brought her speech to life and allowed the audience to see the bigger picture. She shed light to the fact that the world isn’t black and white and is a lot more complex than people realize. By evoking such strong emotions, Clinton was able to help the

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