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Janie Potenza
Professor Collins
ENGL 1302
22 February 2016
Hillary Clinton Makes a Difference
Hillary Clinton, former First Lady of the United States of America, delivered a speech on
September fifth 1995 in Beijing, China. She spoke to the government and important
organizations at the Fourth World Conference to insure that women all over the world had basic
human rights. She addressed that women work hard to support their families and often do not get
credit for what they do. The use of pathos, logos, ethos and anaphora from Hillary Clintons
Fourth World Conference speech raises awareness to her audience that women deserve the same
rights as any other man and should receive respect for all their hard work that goes unnoticed.
In Clintons Fourth World Conference address, pathos was used to connect with the audience.
She gets the audiences attention by emphasizing, At this very moment, women around the
world are giving birth, raising children they are watching their children succumb to
malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivationthey are being denied the right to go
to school (Clinton par. 12). By using these words, the speaker is connecting to families, and
sparking their emotions. She is speaking for the women, who cannot speak for themselves and
she wants others to understand that women cannot gain their full dignity unless their human
rights are respected and protected. In addition to her doing this, she builds a strong connection
with her audience and they begin to feel sympathetic for the struggling mothers, daughters and
babies. With Hillary Clinton using the appeal of pathos, she spoke from her heart hoping to make
a difference to women all around the world.

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Throughout the speech, Former First Lady additionally uses the appeal of logos. Even the
title of the speech indicates common knowledge that womens rights are humans rights. With
Hillary Clinton using the appeal of logos, she gains credibility and her audience knows that she
is educated as well as being well informed. For instance, Clinton describes, ...let It be known
that human rights are womens right and womens right are humans rights once and for all
(Clinton par. 21). With Clinton doing this she is trying to make the words humans rights and
womens rights interchangeable since it is only logical that humans have certain unalienable
rights. As described, Clinton expresses that half of the worlds population is made up of women
and a large portion of these women are poor and are not taught how to read or write. By using
statistics, Clinton creates a mental image for her audience that persuades them and they feel the
need to help. As Hillary Clinton uses logos, she feels as though she can persuade her audience by
giving them actual evidence and facts to back up her speech.
By appealing to the audience and expressing her experiences, Clinton gains ethos to make
her speech appeal more believable. She is also speaking for the women who cannot speak for
themselves. Clinton claims that As an American, I want to speak for those women in my own
country, women who are raising children on minimum wage women whose lives are
threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes (Clinton par. 13). With this being
said, she is establishing trust and she would like to bring attention to the fact that women across
the globe are having problems such as being banned from the ballot, and she is demanding for
improvement on these issues. Clinton also expresses how she worked for twenty-five years on
issues relating to the struggles that women, children and families face every day. Additionally,
she worked two and a half years to specifically work with women in America and around the
world, this is giving her firsthand experience and she holds credibility. By gaining ethos, the

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audience can now rely that Clinton is morally truthful and she shares similar views with her
audience as well.
Another element the speaker provided in her speech was anaphora. Listed in the speech are
multiple moral rights that should be followed, but instead they disregarded and most of the time
encouraged in some countries. She uses certain repetition of words such as violation. She
emphasizes the phrases and starts out each statement by declaring It is a violation of human
rights when (Clinton par. 21). With each statement, Hillary Clinton graphically describes
certain situations that seem to be horrific, It is a violation of human rights when babies are
denied food, or drowned or suffocated, or their spines are broken, simple because they are born
girls (Clinton par. 21). The audience can then have a mental image of what it must be like for
these women across the world in certain countries. Imagery is effective in a way of the audience
being capable of picturing what these mothers, daughters and babies experience and endure.
Therefore, when these statements are listed, emphasis is put here on the fact that women are
being taken for granted and they are not allowed to make their own decisions, regarding their
bodies. As Former First Lady uses anaphora, she is raising awareness of the unrightfully events
that occur, and she wants women to have dignity and respect.
With all evidence gathered, Clinton has given a persuasive speech by strategically using
pathos, logos, ethos and anaphora. She spoke for women who could not speak for themselves and
made a call to action. Furthermore, her goal was to strengthen families and societies by
empowering these women to take control of their own destinies. By using these elements, this
speech was successful in that fact that she created a powerful argument and made it clear that
womens rights were humans rights.

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Works Citied
Clinton, Hillary. Womens Rights are Humans Rights. AmericanRhetoric. AmericanRhetoric
N.d. Web. 9 February 2016.