Speeches are the most impactful mode of communication for politicians. Outstanding speakers know what manner to speak in, so the audience will listen. On 5 September 1995, when Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered her ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’ speech, no one knew the impact her rhetoric would have on the world. The women’s rights movement was furthered by this speech because of the core values and issues she discussed with such grace in her demeanor. As a groundbreaking moment in history, it seems vital to analyze and understand the impact of the language used. Hillary Clinton, who has always been a protector and advocate of women’s rights, was a catalyst of change by presenting her ideas in this speech.
The question: “To what extent did the language of the speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women impact the women’s rights movement?” will be explored and analysed in this Extended Essay. In order to understand the effects her language had on this particular political movement, an effort will be made to discover the purpose, style, and tone of the speech. This will be accomplished by analysing Hillary Clinton’s ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’ speech. Culture and media in 1995 will also be called upon to aid the investigation. The effect the language had on the audience will be explored, as well as the nature of the medium.
Main Body
Women’s Rights affects the global community because everyone in the world is either a woman themselves, or came from a woman. This is why we must ensure women are appreciated and treated fairly. Even if you’re not a woman, this topic is concerning because a healthy and thriving woman will create a healthy and thriving family. The cycle of continuing to better the treatment of women will one day create more successful communities and countries. Although Hillary Clinton isn’t necessarily known for delivering amazing speeches, she surprised everyone with her eloquence at the United Nations Fourth Conference on Women.
When delivering this speech about human and women’s rights, referred to as ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’, Clinton convinced her audience to believe her point by making them feel empowered. Her positive energy captured their attention. Because the girl power movement wasn’t large at this time like it is today, most of the people in the audience were given new ideas about feminism. Many of them realized it was simply the belief that males and females are equal.
Culturally, the speech impacted the women’s rights movement because Clinton addressed people of all walks of life. Women from cities, villages, towns, suburbs, tribes, etc. She says “whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspiration and concern.” This shows her realization that not every woman has the same lifestyle and by saying this she appeals to any way of life those in the audience practice.
Clinton gains interest by sharing similarities that people in the global community face in contrast to the differences. She does this by being relatable and showing people that “there is far more that unites us than divides us.” Women’s Rights in an important topic because women are the fabric that create families. This impacts everyone, including kids, husbands, and wives. And the kids, husbands, and wives build up communities, and the whole world. The speaker’s main idea is that everyone should support gender equality. Clinton supports this by saying “If women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well.”
In present time, the #MeToo movement has become a beacon of hope to end sexual harassment. In the speech, Clinton says “It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed — and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated,” about the issue of sexual assault. This is evidence that her speech possibly impacted the creation of the movement, and it’s success in educating others about sexual harassment. There is a connection because she makes clear that there should be no justification for this kind of behavior. One of the main pillars of the #MeToo movement is making men claim responsibility for their actions and saying no more of this. Considering her speech was given in 1995, and the #MeToo movement is recent as of 2017, it shows the lasting impact her words have had over the past twenty two years. Additionally, by losing the presidential election in 2016, Clinton perpetuated the girl power movement because “a fervor has swept the country, prompting women’s marches, a record number of female candidates running for office and an outcry about sexual assault at all levels of society” as stated by New York Times’ Amy Chozick. On the other hand, some say Hillary is not a champion of the #MeToo movement because of the sexual misdeeds of her husband Bill. Many feminists don’t understand how she could stay in a relationship with someone who has performed infidelity and lied about his improper relations with Monica Lewinsky. In this sense, Hillary herself did not positively impact the important and recent sexual assault movement, but her speech did indeed have a sound impact on #MeToo.
From the introduction of her speech and all throughout, Hillary Clinton makes it obvious that she thinks women hold great importance in the world. She used the tactic of contrasting women who do different roles and have different jobs so her speech could be more relevant. She brings it to the attention of the onlooker that everyone “shares a common future” and said the common future is the children in our society. This idea makes the reader realize that we, as people in the global community, have more in common than we may think. An important part is when she speaks on “the violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.” This is in reference to baby girls in India who are treated as less than boys and are sometimes violently harmed, or put up for adoption. In my research, I have learned that there is a common saying in India that goes, “Educating a girl is like watering your neighbor’s farm.” Traditional Indians believe this because women are often married off at a young age to another family, so even if you pay to have them educated, your family will not reap the benefits of that education. By drawing attention to this in her speech, we can deduce that Hillary is attempting to draw attention to the problem. We can often determine the level of educated women in a particular country by analyzing the literacy rates of these women. The education crisis in India has not been solved, though, as the rates of literacy have not improved as drastically as would be considered successful. The literacy rate for women in India in 1995 was 51.9 percent, whereas now it is about 65 percent according to the Compendium of statistics on illiteracy by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2018. Although this is an improvement, historically leading up to 1995, the women’s literacy rate in India increased ten percent every ten years. By this point in time, based on these statistics, 86 percent of India’s female population should be able to read, but that goal has not been met.
In Hillary Clinton’s speech, she uses words that are not complicated, but hold great meaning. These are words such as “respect”, “dignity” and “strength.” If a speaker uses large words consistently in a speech, it may seem like they are intentionally trying to be pretentious or behave affectedly. This is not the case, however, for the speaker in her address to the UN. Also important to note is that Clinton uses notes to give her speech, whereas many politicians and public speakers are able to talk about something they are truly passionate about from memory. It can impact the way the speech is received by others. Her presentation of the speech was about 20 minutes long, which probably the reason she needed notes, due to the fact it was so long. Additionally, Clinton does not use any humor in her speech. Although humor may not be appropriate in a speech of this nature, it can sometimes be helpful to engage an audience. She also has a lack of hand gestures which can reveal passion. Many great speakers use(d) hand gestures: such as Barack Obama, Malala, and Abraham Lincoln just to name a few.
This UN Women’s conference was in Beijing, and at the time, Hillary Clinton was the First Lady of the United States. Bill Clinton’s administration did not want her to attend the conference due to political tension with China. She decided to go anyway, and this shows persistence and dedication to the cause. This being said, Clinton even addresses those who oppose women’s rights in her speech. “There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.” The speaker continues by making clear pathways between women being able to flourish then causing nations to flourish. She uses repetition to do so, “If women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well.” We know that repetition is an effective way to reach the audience, as we can see with many famous speeches. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.”
Clinton also uses her reputation as a civil servant to give credibility to what she is saying. She adds that “Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to women.” These issues include poverty, education, equality, and abuse. This, combined with the fact that the United Nations is a highly regarded organization, makes it more likely for people to listen to the message she is conveying in her speech. Clinton states specific countries and the issues relating to these countries in an attempt to relate to members of the audience. She states several communities (Indonesia, South Africa, India, Bangladesh, and Ukraine) and their problems in a paragraph with the same sentence structure. From this, we can draw a criticism of the ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’ speech. It would be that Clinton uses repetition as a rhetorical device too often, and it actually makes the words less meaningful rather than more meaningful.
In the tenth paragraph, she states “The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard.” This quote particularly reminds me of Malala Yousafzai's famous quote, “We realize the importance of our voice only when they are silenced.” Malala is much younger than Hillary, but they are similar figures in regard to championing women’s rights. These similar quotes could indicate that Yousafzai gained inspiration and insight from Clinton’s speech and used a similar approach to build her platform. This would show a direct impact Clinton’s language had on the women’s rights movement.
Clinton utilizes statistics in her speech by saying, “Women comprise more than half of the world’s population, 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write.” In regard to the current statistics on women, they have improved since Clinton’s speech and the information she shared was a catalyst for this change. For example, only 17 percent of women in Nepal could read in 1995, but by 2010, that number had climbed to 48 percent. Globally, women still account for nearly two-thirds of those who can't read. It is important to address that Hillary Clinton’s impact through this specific speech is hard to measure. Because she presented it to the United Nations, a group of diplomats dedicated to change the world, it is plausible they took action after hearing it. The extent that the speech helped women might be more through awareness of the issues, rather than actual change. Either way, it shows her rhetoric and self-expression did impact the women’s rights movement.
As the speech progresses, Clinton gets more serious and her tone changes. She creates a realization for the people sitting in the audience about the opportunities and responsibilities they are blessed with. The tone is that of someone who is very thankful. Culturally, she was thankful that women in her country are mostly equal, and she pays tribute to the fact that the effort for women’s suffrage was non-violent in the United States. An interesting thought is the fact that gender equality is quite possibly here, just not evenly distributed around the world. Additionally, she makes interesting points about gender equity vs. gender equality. In order to gain gender equality, we must first have equity. Equality is the mission Clinton presents in her speech, but she realizes that equity is our means of getting there. For example, equality would be everyone in the world riding the same bicycle. If you think about it, small children would not be able to use the same bike as grown men. A disabled person would not be able to use the same bike as someone nondisabled. And in Clinton’s speech, she makes this point by saying, “We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives.” In other words, it is important for women to be able to choose their own path- whether they go into STEM or motherhood or both; their societal roles are important.
The claims Clinton made were radical for the ’90s, especially since the speech was before the girl power movement took off in 2016. However, her diction and the way she spoke made her ideas seem tangible. She danced the audience through her mission and plan step by step to make it seem more realistic. The ideas seemed tangible partly because she presents a specific goal for the conference: “to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies.” Additionally, she calls all governments to action to accept their responsibility and promote internationally recognized human rights.
When Clinton uses inclusive pronouns such as “we”, “us”, and “the global community”, it is truly encouraging. It makes the audience unite on common ground. With this in mind, Clinton is interrupted by applause when she says, “The international community has long acknowledged and recently reaffirmed at Vienna that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms,” The appeal of this section is attributed to the long pauses Clinton takes between phrases so the listener has time to fully absorb what she just said. Because the speech was delivered on the “eve of a new millennium” it creates a figure of hope for people struggling to gain gender equality. The passing of time can often serve as a motif for great change, and Clinton uses this in her speech. “I believe that now, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break the silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.” She continues to use repetition in her speech, and it provokes thought within the audience.
She talks about specific examples of cultural events that happen in countries that are a violation of human rights, such as being sold into slavery, being subjected to rape, or being brutalized by genital mutilation. Next, Clinton says something that has truly impacted the women’s rights movement today. She said “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women rights are human rights once and for all.” The applause exploded when she said this, and in a metaphorical way the applause hasn’t stopped since then. T-shirts, twitter trends, hashtags, laptop stickers, etc. have exploded since Clinton popularized this feminist slogan. Through this, awareness for women’s rights has increased. This phrase is important in the speech because it is the main idea being expressed. Throughout the speech, Clinton promotes peace over violence. She speaks on behalf of the impact civil disobedience can have instead of attacking others. It shows an undeniable impact she made on the world.
Something that differentiates Clinton’s speech is the nature in which she does not adhere to the usual conventions of the genre. She is both argumentative and descriptive during her speech. She strays away from traditional conventions. This creates more controversy, shocks the audience, and renders reactions through her bold diction. Because Hillary Clinton is a woman, it could be argued that she is bias about the topic of women’s rights. The message could possibly have been exaggerated, and this would be an impact of bias. On the other hand, it could be argued that her personal experiences as a female enhance her ability to have knowledge on the topic.
Conclusion
Hillary Clinton made an impact by saying “Women’s rights are human rights” because her speech was the first to create/popularize the phrase. Through this speech, Clinton made women aware of the respect and dignity they deserve. She made it known that women are capable of anything that men are capable of. Her language was very effective in persuading the audience. She did this through her disposition, appeals, and style. Specifically, naming countries and their issues to relate to the audience. Her bold rhetoric and creative phrasing shows a great progression in feminism. Hillary Clinton’s impact has mostly been raising awareness for the issue presented. Her speech might not have directly changed laws and helped women in third world countries, but it raised awareness for all women and their societal treatment. We have benefitted from her inspirational words and the rich language of the speech has the potential to impact many more lives than it already has.