Women in Politics

[honeycani]

  In the article “Women in Politics”  Wicks & Lang-Dion effectively argue that women in Canadian politics are still searching for an equal voice. The authors use logos, ethos and pathos as the rhetorical strategies to illustrate their arguments. Firstly, they use logos to explain how society and political forum think of the female politicians. The authors use American female political Hillary Clinton as an example. They say the reason Hillary was failed to be chosen as the next American president because that her tone of speeches make males feel boring. Also, the political scientists Linda Trimble and Jane Arscott state there is still a traditional opinion “persistent observation that women leaders just do not fit”. Then, the author use ethos to convince Canada system is unfair to female politicians, and they should provide more opportunities to women to achieve the gender equality. They compare the proportion of Sweden’s female national legislators with the proportion of Canada’s female national legislators, and we can clearly see there is an obvious gap between two counties in amounts of female national legislators. For instance, “47.3 percent of national legislators in Sweden female and compared with only 21.7 percent in Canada” this data effectively support the authors’ view that Canadian women are still fighting for the equal chance in the political platform. Finally, the authors use pathos to persuade readers to fight against the inequality of female and male. They use an example from the personal experience of Hillary Clinton; she was evaluated by her “dumpy pantsuit” rather than her political skills. They successfully uses logos, ethos, and pathos to reveals the problem of gender inequality that is still topical when it comes to politics. Canada as a country which is a representation of peace, multi-cultural, and equality should play a leading part in fighting against the gender inequality no matter in the political area or other areas.

Question: Which rhetorical strategy do you think it’s the most effectively one that make you agree with the authors’ point of view. 

Comments

[mindful_matter]

I think that the authors did a great job of combining all three strategies. I find its much easier to understand when the points rotate between them like describing Hillary Clintons 'dumpy pantsuit' and then using stats as evidence of female contributions to follow. I find these strategies the most useful when used together as opposed to just using logos or just using pathos etc. Hearing fact after fact after can become boring and tedious. The use of ethos within the argument of Sweden's political influences was also very well done.

[flames_fan]

I always find it hard to argue against cold hard facts and numbers. The authors' use of logos by comparing the statistics of elected female politicians among the various countries clearly shows that Canada is lacking in the department of equal political representation among men and women.

Answer to Question

[taylormay]

I find the authors use of logos most effective for making me agree with their point of view. I am a factual person and I am more easily persuaded when all the statistics are in front of me.