Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender Diversity In Business
Rhetorical Analysis on Gender Diversity in Business
The article that I chose is “Why gender diversity matters for successful business: The women's empowerment principles” by Rae Julian. I found this article on NC Live and used it previously in my annotated bibliography paper. If you examine this quote from the website Time Magazine, “research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research shows that even in occupations that are dominated by women, men still tend to earn more” (Alter). Gender inequality within business is prevalent, but unnecessary. I choose this particular article because I am very interested in gender inequality in business and this article talks not only about how it has formed, but gives a solution to end gender inequality within business. This is very relative to my field of study because I am a female wanting to go into business, hoping that one day I will own or be the chief executive officer of a business. In the article, it gives me helpful hints on how to achieve this dream.
Julian starts off with the reasons companies give for not promoting more women. Then she goes into what businesses should be doing because they signed the Women Empowerment Principles, which are supposed to promote gender equality in business. Next she states that to have a good global economy women have to be involved and that …show more content…
the Women Empowerment Principles do a good job of trying to make this happen. After that, she goes into a breakdown of six different things that the Women Empowerment Principles have done to improve gender equality in business. Lastly, she states that businesses have agreed to the Women Empowerment Principles and followed them, trying to convince other business to sign and agree to the principles too.
Julian establishes credibility by having a small section at the end of the article listing off her accolades and accomplishments. In this section it states that Rae Julian is the immediate past president of Women NC Aotearoa NZ and that she serves as a member of UN Women’s Regional Civil Society Advisory Group for the Asia Pacific Region. Julian is very passionate about her subject; she really wants to convince the reader that they should believe in the Women Empowerment Principles. If we analyze this quote from the article: “Moreover, the empowerment of women is an investment in communities and society as a whole” (Julian). The word investment makes people think that it is a good idea, so the writer is trying to convince her audience. The word empowerment has proven to be a very passionate word throughout history, especially in women’s rights and race equality. We can conclude that when Julian uses specific vocabulary, she shows that she wants to convince her audience and that she is very passionate about her subject.
The audience for Julian’s article is business leaders and owners.
We know that this is the intended audience because in the conclusion of the article it states that other businesses are encouraged to take up the Women Empowerment Principles too. The audience does not need any previous knowledge about this topic because the writer explains what the principles are and why they are needed within the text. Going off of this, the argument or subject of this article is the necessity of the Women Empowerment Principles within business. From the subject, anyone can tell that the limitation of this article is that it is only really pertinent for
business.
Within this article there are many rhetorical appeals being used. One appeal that is used is ethos. The ethos appeal is when the writer relies on their own credibility to influence the reader. Julian does this within her article when she has a small section at the end of her article with her accomplishments listed. This is an ethos appeal because it makes Julian seem more credible and trustworthy to her audience because she has all of these achievements. By doing this the reader is more likely to believe in her argument.
Pathos is another appeal used in this article. This is the appeal used most often throughout the article. The pathos appeal is when the writer appeals to the audience’s emotions. One pathos appeal in the article is the quote “Women can do anything is an expression much-mooted since the 1970s” (Julian). One other pathos appeal is when Julian writes about the hidden and subconscious meanings of why women are not promoted into senior positions within business. These make the reader feel sad and angry that women’s equality has been muted and that females are still not being promoted into senior positions.
The last appeal is logos. The logos appeal is when the writer uses logic and reason to appeal to their audience. A logos appeal can be a statistic, logical reason, or a fact. One example of logos appeal in this article is when Julian writes “Thirty-six New Zealand businesses… have signed on to the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), an international campaign organized by UN Women and the Global Compact, thus joining the over 700 worldwide signatories” (Julian). This is a statistic about how many businesses have signed an agreed to follow the Women Empowerment Principles, which makes it seem as though the principles work. This is a logos appeal because it uses the logic of a statistic to convince the reader of Julian’s argument.
The reader’s interpretation can be changed or skewed based upon different cultural, historical, social, and political contexts. For example a cultural context that could skew this article includes the fact that in more westernized civilizations, women have more equality compared to Asian and Middle Eastern cultures. A social context that could change the interpretation of this article is the gender of the reader. This is especially true if the reader has the cultural values of Middle Eastern or Asian culture. In these two cultures, women are of a lower status than men, so if a man reads this he might pay less attention or care less than a woman would. A historical context that could skew this article would be the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1920s. Since this movement, women have gained more equality and without it this article would not even be published or considered. Going off of the historical context example, another historical and political context case would be the nineteenth amendment. Without the nineteenth amendment women would not have been able to receive voting rights, which would have led to greater gender inequality in business today. Again this article would not have been written or considered without the nineteenth amendment. Most of the information in the article uses pathos appeals and is not based upon facts, but opinions. That means that it can be argued. Using this information the article is biased and can be easily skewed depending upon the reader.
When you first examine this article you see a huge title and a picture of men outnumbering women in business attire. This immediately stands out and grabs the reader’s attention. The picture also gives a foreshadowing of what the article is about. After the picture and title are small arrow-like bullet points, which have information about why women are not hired for higher level jobs and the six main principles of the Women Empowerment Principles. These are well placed as it lets the audience know all the important points of the article. Next you see the principles labeled as subtitles. These go into more detail on the principle that is labeled as the subtitle. Throughout the paper there are also scattered emphasized quotes. These quotes really try to convince the reader that the Women Empowerment Principles should be put into action within businesses. These quotes are remembered well by the reader, since they stand out so much. Examining the article, as a whole the first part grabs the reader’s attention. The next part gives the audience the summarized version of what is in the article, and the last part gives more details about the principles and attempts to convince the reader to invest in the Women Empowerment Principles. This adds to my interpretation of the article because it shows me how much Julian wanted to catch the reader’s attention and convince the audience that the principles should be employed in businesses.
Some elements of rhetorical analysis that stood out and surprised me were the emphasized quotes. I thought that the way Julian put the quotes in there to convince the reader was very clever. I was also surprised at how much pathos was in the article. Based on my analysis of the article I can conclude that the article is biased. It does a fabulous job at using appeals to convince the audience that they should employ the Women Empowerment Principles and the setup of the article is ideal for grabbing the reader’s attention. This article will be effective on women in business and some men in business. It will be effective for them because it will encourage women to empower themselves within their business and will convince females and males that the principles will help lessen gender inequality in business. On the flip side, it will be ineffective for the males that hold Middle Eastern and Asian cultural values because to them gender diversity and gender equality are not necessarily important within business. This article tells me a lot about writing within my field. For example, it tells me that I need to grab the reader’s attention first. I also need to use lots of appeals when attempting to convince an audience. One more thing that it taught me was that I need to pay attention to the small details, such as my vocabulary and emphasizing specific phrases and words. That is not all that this essay taught me though, it also taught me that having gender diversity within business is an intelligent and wonderful thing. As the website 2020 Women on Boards states, “Advancing women to positions of leadership is smart business” (“Why”).
The article that I chose is “Why gender diversity matters for successful business: The women's empowerment principles” by Rae Julian. I found this article on NC Live and used it previously in my annotated bibliography paper. If you examine this quote from the website Time Magazine, “research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research shows that even in occupations that are dominated by women, men still tend to earn more” (Alter). Gender inequality within business is prevalent, but unnecessary. I choose this particular article because I am very interested in gender inequality in business and this article talks not only about how it has formed, but gives a solution to end gender inequality within business. This is very relative to my field of study because I am a female wanting to go into business, hoping that one day I will own or be the chief executive officer of a business. In the article, it gives me helpful hints on how to achieve this dream.
Julian starts off with the reasons companies give for not promoting more women. Then she goes into what businesses should be doing because they signed the Women Empowerment Principles, which are supposed to promote gender equality in business. Next she states that to have a good global economy women have to be involved and that …show more content…
the Women Empowerment Principles do a good job of trying to make this happen. After that, she goes into a breakdown of six different things that the Women Empowerment Principles have done to improve gender equality in business. Lastly, she states that businesses have agreed to the Women Empowerment Principles and followed them, trying to convince other business to sign and agree to the principles too.
Julian establishes credibility by having a small section at the end of the article listing off her accolades and accomplishments. In this section it states that Rae Julian is the immediate past president of Women NC Aotearoa NZ and that she serves as a member of UN Women’s Regional Civil Society Advisory Group for the Asia Pacific Region. Julian is very passionate about her subject; she really wants to convince the reader that they should believe in the Women Empowerment Principles. If we analyze this quote from the article: “Moreover, the empowerment of women is an investment in communities and society as a whole” (Julian). The word investment makes people think that it is a good idea, so the writer is trying to convince her audience. The word empowerment has proven to be a very passionate word throughout history, especially in women’s rights and race equality. We can conclude that when Julian uses specific vocabulary, she shows that she wants to convince her audience and that she is very passionate about her subject.
The audience for Julian’s article is business leaders and owners.
We know that this is the intended audience because in the conclusion of the article it states that other businesses are encouraged to take up the Women Empowerment Principles too. The audience does not need any previous knowledge about this topic because the writer explains what the principles are and why they are needed within the text. Going off of this, the argument or subject of this article is the necessity of the Women Empowerment Principles within business. From the subject, anyone can tell that the limitation of this article is that it is only really pertinent for
business.
Within this article there are many rhetorical appeals being used. One appeal that is used is ethos. The ethos appeal is when the writer relies on their own credibility to influence the reader. Julian does this within her article when she has a small section at the end of her article with her accomplishments listed. This is an ethos appeal because it makes Julian seem more credible and trustworthy to her audience because she has all of these achievements. By doing this the reader is more likely to believe in her argument.
Pathos is another appeal used in this article. This is the appeal used most often throughout the article. The pathos appeal is when the writer appeals to the audience’s emotions. One pathos appeal in the article is the quote “Women can do anything is an expression much-mooted since the 1970s” (Julian). One other pathos appeal is when Julian writes about the hidden and subconscious meanings of why women are not promoted into senior positions within business. These make the reader feel sad and angry that women’s equality has been muted and that females are still not being promoted into senior positions.
The last appeal is logos. The logos appeal is when the writer uses logic and reason to appeal to their audience. A logos appeal can be a statistic, logical reason, or a fact. One example of logos appeal in this article is when Julian writes “Thirty-six New Zealand businesses… have signed on to the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), an international campaign organized by UN Women and the Global Compact, thus joining the over 700 worldwide signatories” (Julian). This is a statistic about how many businesses have signed an agreed to follow the Women Empowerment Principles, which makes it seem as though the principles work. This is a logos appeal because it uses the logic of a statistic to convince the reader of Julian’s argument.
The reader’s interpretation can be changed or skewed based upon different cultural, historical, social, and political contexts. For example a cultural context that could skew this article includes the fact that in more westernized civilizations, women have more equality compared to Asian and Middle Eastern cultures. A social context that could change the interpretation of this article is the gender of the reader. This is especially true if the reader has the cultural values of Middle Eastern or Asian culture. In these two cultures, women are of a lower status than men, so if a man reads this he might pay less attention or care less than a woman would. A historical context that could skew this article would be the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1920s. Since this movement, women have gained more equality and without it this article would not even be published or considered. Going off of the historical context example, another historical and political context case would be the nineteenth amendment. Without the nineteenth amendment women would not have been able to receive voting rights, which would have led to greater gender inequality in business today. Again this article would not have been written or considered without the nineteenth amendment. Most of the information in the article uses pathos appeals and is not based upon facts, but opinions. That means that it can be argued. Using this information the article is biased and can be easily skewed depending upon the reader.
When you first examine this article you see a huge title and a picture of men outnumbering women in business attire. This immediately stands out and grabs the reader’s attention. The picture also gives a foreshadowing of what the article is about. After the picture and title are small arrow-like bullet points, which have information about why women are not hired for higher level jobs and the six main principles of the Women Empowerment Principles. These are well placed as it lets the audience know all the important points of the article. Next you see the principles labeled as subtitles. These go into more detail on the principle that is labeled as the subtitle. Throughout the paper there are also scattered emphasized quotes. These quotes really try to convince the reader that the Women Empowerment Principles should be put into action within businesses. These quotes are remembered well by the reader, since they stand out so much. Examining the article, as a whole the first part grabs the reader’s attention. The next part gives the audience the summarized version of what is in the article, and the last part gives more details about the principles and attempts to convince the reader to invest in the Women Empowerment Principles. This adds to my interpretation of the article because it shows me how much Julian wanted to catch the reader’s attention and convince the audience that the principles should be employed in businesses.
Some elements of rhetorical analysis that stood out and surprised me were the emphasized quotes. I thought that the way Julian put the quotes in there to convince the reader was very clever. I was also surprised at how much pathos was in the article. Based on my analysis of the article I can conclude that the article is biased. It does a fabulous job at using appeals to convince the audience that they should employ the Women Empowerment Principles and the setup of the article is ideal for grabbing the reader’s attention. This article will be effective on women in business and some men in business. It will be effective for them because it will encourage women to empower themselves within their business and will convince females and males that the principles will help lessen gender inequality in business. On the flip side, it will be ineffective for the males that hold Middle Eastern and Asian cultural values because to them gender diversity and gender equality are not necessarily important within business. This article tells me a lot about writing within my field. For example, it tells me that I need to grab the reader’s attention first. I also need to use lots of appeals when attempting to convince an audience. One more thing that it taught me was that I need to pay attention to the small details, such as my vocabulary and emphasizing specific phrases and words. That is not all that this essay taught me though, it also taught me that having gender diversity within business is an intelligent and wonderful thing. As the website 2020 Women on Boards states, “Advancing women to positions of leadership is smart business” (“Why”).