In our society, gender inequality has become a prominent issue. Society has standards on how each gender should behave and act in a specific way. The speech Emma Watson gave to the UK was effective in conveying the issue of gender inequality to the audience. She argues the need to end these gender stereotypes by launching the campaign called “HeForShe” because if we don’t, gender inequality will always exist which will be detrimental towards our society. Emma utilizes an emotional appeal to develop her argument on the issue of gender inequality. She uses her personal life experience to create a sense of emotion that relates to the issue of gender inequality. She states, ”I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mothers. I’ve seen a young man suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make him less of a man. Watson’s life experience has shown us what we as humans have done to our society. We created these gender stereotypes that have been pernicious to our society. We have made standards of how a male and a female should behave and act in a certain way. For example, we believe it is a women’s job to take care of children more than men, but in Watson’s case, she needed her father’s presence just as her mothers. Furthermore, we as a society believe men are supposed to act strong and asking for help wouldn’t make them more manly. Again in her case, the young man was suffering, but didn’t ask for help due to the gender stereotypes we as a society established. This generates powerful emotions of sorrowfulness because of the constant rejections the man had from society and how he suffered from it.  Emma also states, ”If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we just are.” Watson is addressing a potential solution to our gender inequality problems by asking us to stop focusing on each other, but rather ourselves. We need to ameliorate our society to make it more welcoming and comforting for everyone. Everyone should freely express how they act and behave without us implementing these gender stereotypes onto people. If we can unite and work together to end these gender stereotypes, then we can have a promising future that welcomes everyone to express themselves in whatever way they want.     

Source https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/9/emma-watson-gender-equality-is-your-issue-too

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