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Epstein

Katierose Epstein
CAS 137 H
Dr. Raman
October 8, 2015
A new movement towards gender equality An Analysis of the He for She Campaign
Poster and Emma Watsons Speech as Ambassador to the United Nations
Feminism has been a controversial and misunderstood topic for centuries. The UN
Womens He for She campaign is attempting to educate people, especially men and boys,
about the importance of a movement for gender equality. The campaign poster advertisement
successfully creates a visual representation of both the male and female genders working
harmoniously towards this common goal. Similarly, Emma Watsons He for She campaign
speech focuses on the benefits of gender equality with an emphasis on feminism. This speech
successfully persuades boys and men throughout the United Nations to join with girls and
women towards gender equality by utilizing her personal experiences to define the purposes of
the campaign, thus creating a call to action of encouraging people to work toward human rights.
In this paper, the UN Women He for She campaign poster will be examined first to
explain the widespread solidarity of the movement towards equality. Then, Emma Watsons UN
Women He for She speech will be analyzed to understand how it successfully calls upon boys
and men to work for gender equality. Finally, a juxtaposition of both the poster and the speech
will be expounded upon to understand how they are helping feminism move forward throughout
the world. The idea of civic duty can be found throughout these two artifacts as they are asking
us to join in a movement. The campaign poster calls people of the United Nations to action
implicitly while Emma Watson specifically calls men and boys explicitly to join.
The He for She campaign advertisement has the main purpose of bringing to light the
solidarity movement for gender equality, as stated on the poster. The ideology of this artifact is

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to challenge gender roles which is done so through the use of colors in different areas throughout
the ad. On the left hand side of the poster, the words UN Women and their symbol are included
in the color blue. The purpose of this is to break the gender norm of blue being generally
associated with masculinity. The gender symbols in the middle of the poster attempt to break the
gender gap as well. The male part of the gender symbol is pink while the female gender symbol
is black. There is a complex reasoning behind this considering the UN Women are attempting to
draw more attention to the male part of the symbol to emphasize the civic duty of men, but also
to bring about the idea that pink is not just a feminine color. Even though the background of the
advertisement is simple and gray, it has an important effect as it allows for the primary message
of the campaign to be recognized quickly. Appeals to emotion, logic, and ethics can be found in
the words and symbols of the poster. Pathos is represented in the motivating slogan especially
through the words solidarity and equality. This emotional appeal can also be seen in the
words HeForShe under the gender symbol. Men feel as if it is their duty to join this movement
due to their gender term being placed first in the name of the campaign. Moreover, the
combination of the two gender symbols creates the idea that it is logical for both men and
women to be working together for this cause. The inclusion of the UN Women and the symbol
for this group applies to ethos considering the United Nations is the main organization that
countries can join to attempt to maintain peace throughout the world. This also plays largely into
civic duty because there is an obligation to participate in the campaign if the country you are a
citizen of is a member of the United Nations.
In her speech, Emma Watson explains the essence of the He for She campaign as well as
its goals for future participants. She establishes her ethos fairly quickly by mentioning her
appointment as ambassador to the UN Women within the first thirty seconds. Watson also

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receives a lot of respect from the millennial generation even before she begins speaking due to
her role as an actress in the Harry Potter film franchise. Later on in the speech, Watson mentions
rights she deems to be human rights which establishes logos. She believes the rights that men all
over the world already have should be the exact same for women, and that is what the campaign
is all about. Through her explicit definition of feminism, Watson incorporates ethos and logos
together since she establishes her credibility as a feminist and provides logic to support her claim
of human rights being womens rights and vice versa.
In addition to logically and ethically introducing the campaign, Watson provides a large
amount of passionate and emotional appeals to the subject of gender equality. The breadth of her
speech is personal anecdotes about her life as a child and a young adult in terms of human rights.
Perhaps the most emotional quote from this middle section is when at eight I was confused at
being called bossy because it takes the audience into Watsons hardships as a child. In
order to implement pathos throughout this part of the speech, she begins each new statement with
when at and then follows it by an age, and what was happening to either her or her friends. She
also takes more dramatic pauses for effect in this section than any other part of the speech. The
inclusion of her friends helps a lot in creating an emotional appeal that is not purely asking for
pity, but instead, a call to action. Towards the end of her speech, the call to action comes back in
pathos but through frightening statistics rather than personal anecdotes.
In similar fashion, a call to action has a large element of kairos embedded in it, by
definition. By using shocking statistics that could occur in the very near future, there is a sense of
urgency to the campaign in her speech. For example, Emma Watson states 15.5 million girls
will be married in the next sixteen years as children, which gives the audience a drastic mental
picture of what could happen if people do not start joining in on the movement towards gender

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equality immediately. Her explanations of feminism throughout the speech also tie directly into
kairos. One of Watsons last points is If you believe in equality, you might be one of those
inadvertent feminists which brings in an even larger audience due to most young people
being unaware of the real definition of feminism. The He for She campaign could not have
come at a more perfect time considering this is the age of social media. In order for the word to
get out about the campaign, a hashtag has been placed in front of HeForShe on multiple social
media platforms. This has broadened the audience to people of all ages and genders, in countries
all over the world.
Finally, the ideology of Emma Watsons speech on behalf of the UN Women is crucial to
be considered. The over-arching point she is attempting to get across is there is a significant
difference between man-hating and feminism. She provides a dictionary definition of feminism
within the first few minutes of the speech, and this helps to create a distinction between the two
terms right from the beginning. After including personal anecdotes later on in the speech, Watson
describes the rights she believes women should have. It is important to note she recognizes her
privileged upbringing in that [her] parents didnt love [her] less because [she] was born a
daughter as well as many other instances. However, just before this recognition of privilege she
explains there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive [human]
rights. Both of these quotes allude back to the ideology of the speech by distinguishing
feminism as a campaign for not just womens rights, and not just white womens rights but the
rights for women all over the world, that are inherently human. Through her extensive
explanation of feminism, people have begun to understand it is a campaign for gender equality,
not a campaign for women superiority. This is the primary reasoning behind the UNs creation of
the He for She campaign.

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Though the ideologies and the appeals to logos and pathos of the advertisement and the
speech are slightly different, they are intended for similar audiences and employ ethos and kairos
in the same way to successfully create a solidarity campaign for gender equality. While the
poster advertisement uses colors to differentiate between men and women logically, Emma
Watson explains the general rights men receive versus the lack of rights women receive. Pathos
is found purely in the slogan on the poster whereas pathos is an integral part of Watson
communicating her message to the audience. Moreover, men and boys are primarily targeted as
the audience for both parts of these campaigns because the producers of both artifacts know that
women are already involved in this movement. Ethically, the UN Women are an important
organization in the world and the advertisement and Watson emphasize that. Since both artifacts
were created at nearly the same time, the kairos of them is bound to be similar despite the crucial
role it plays.
As a result, both aspects of the He for She campaign are bringing men and boys aboard,
as we speak, for gender equality. Earning equal rights for women and men has been a process in
the making for centuries, but now it is no longer in the making, it is in the working. By the time
the millennial generations kids have kids, there will be no need for these campaigns because
those children will not know a life without equality.

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Works Cited
UN Women (2014). He For She. Retrieved from http://www.heforshe.org/

Henning, Martha (August, 1998). Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Retrieved from
http://courses.durhamtech.edu/perkins/aris.html

UN Women (September, 2014). Emma Watson: Gender equality is your issue too. Retrieved
from http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/9/emma-watson-gender-equality-is-yourissue-too

YouTube User (September, 2014). Emma Watson UN speech. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/piFl4qhBsE

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