In Shirley Chisholm's speech "Equal Rights for Women" she uses logos as a device to appeal to her audience. She uses statistics to depict overwhelming ratios of men to women in high power positions. For example, she says "More than half of the population of the United States is female. But women occupy only 2 percent of the managerial positions." Obviously it doesn't make sense logically for women to be the majority of the population but only fulfill that small of a percent of managerial positions available. She also calls into question in her speech how racial prejudice is unacceptable and therefore discrimination against women should also be unacceptable. I have included an interesting link that includes recent statistics for women's income in the workforce (Women in the workforce information). Chisholm also speaks about how there was proof that the current laws were not sufficient enough to secure equal rights for women. She included that "the concentration of women in lower paying, menial, unrewarding jobs and their incredible scarcity in the upper level jobs" was proof of how current laws did not give women equal rights. The link I provided is proof that women are still facing these issues, just not in as large of a concentration.
Chisholm's irrefutable information only works to further her credibility as a speaker. Her information is relevant, reliable, and strategic. She presents these facts in such a foolproof way that there was no chance for her statements to be logically proven wrong. She used this to effectively highlight an important problem that, like you've mentioned and shown, is still being dealt with to this day.
ReplyDeleteUsing logos in a persuasive speech is very important. Chisholm's use of logos in her speech made her more persuasive because it proves to her audience that she has actually done her research and gives her the authority and experience to use that information to persuade Congress.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing that she used so much logical arguments and facts in her argument, yet the Equal Rights Amendment was still not passed. It makes you wonder how important logos is in rhetoric and if it is as effective as an appeal to pathos. I wonder if her same speech today would be able to pass the amendment now with the same appeal to logos.
ReplyDelete