Emma Watson Speech Summary

Analysis of Emma Watson’s speech HeForShe

Purpose

Emma Watson tried to alter audience’s perception about the meaning of word feminism while acknowledging the misinterpretation of this word when saying “fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating,” (7) and giving the right definition “feminism by definition is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities” (10). Moreover, Watson alerted to the fact that despite gender inequality has been a persisting phenomenon because “No country in the world can yet say they achieved gender equality,” (29) only women seem to fight for gender equality. Therefore, she appealed to men by emphasising the fact that “men don’t have the benefits of equality either” (49) and tried to engage them in the HeForShe movement

Watson put her thesis as a second sentence “We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved” (2) and supported her thesis by several claims further in her speech. The speech was organised in a logical structure. Watson used the problem-solution organisation. However, it was difficult to identify clear borders between introduction, body and conclusion of the speech. The gender inequality problem was stated throughout the speech, first from the female perspective using primarily Watson’s personal stories, then from male perspective using general examples when men experienced inequalities. The climax came in the middle of the speech when Watson invited men to participate in feminism too and at the end when she questioned herself and eventually everyone “If not me, who? If not now, when?” (70).

To state the main claim at the very beginning of the speech was a good decision because the diverse evidence and an unclear organisation might have been confusing for the audience. However, the main message and purpose was clear from the very beginning, thus no audience member got lost.