Empowering Women: Global Voices of Rhetorical Influence

(Hardback)

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Empowering Women: Global Voices of Rhetorical Influence explores the topic of womens empowerment, offers a theoretical foundation to understand empowerment, and addresses the value of applying a rhetorical analysis to understand womens rights. In each chapter, Julia A. Spiker explores the rhetoric surrounding womens empowerment by analyzing elite female political leaders from around the world, with each analysis incorporating a rhetorical empowerment framework to unveil key issues surrounding womens empowerment. Spiker then links the rhetorical findings from each case to highlight similarities and differences in the challenges to womens empowerment outlined by world leaders. The conclusion to Empowering Women synthesizes these findings to present an overarching, global picture of womens empowerment. Scholars of gender studies, womens studies, communication, rhetoric, international relations, and political science will find this volume especially useful.

Reviews

Julia A. Spiker makes a significant contribution with Empowering Women: Global Voices of Rhetorical Influence, because, sadlyso often the voices of women leaders are not heard, let alone examined and interpreted. In this volume, Spiker does that and more. She creates understanding for the great value of womens voices within a global political rhetorical communication context. By sharing the rhetoric of elite political leaders, the author invites the reader to learn more about these women, and, as more and more women step into political arenas globally, understanding the obstacles and opportunities that women face on their road to empowerment, by listening to their own words, is invaluable. -- Nichola D. Gutgold, Penn State University
Julia A. Spikers study uses a subtle but illuminating theoretical framework to study the rhetoric of global women leaders. The rhetorical portraits she offers are, however, the highlight of the book. They are rich in detail, and they cover most continents. Spiker, while acknowledging that the situations faced by women and women in politics vary from culture to culture, succeeds in assembling a global rhetoric of empowerment shared, in their individual ways, by the women she has chosen to study. Spikers case studies set a model for others studying women in global politics to follow, and her definition of a shared rhetoric of empowerment provides others with a quite useful starting point in furthering our understanding and appreciation of what women have achieved in government throughout the world. -- Theodore Sheckels, Randolph-Macon College

Author Bio

Julia A. Spiker is professor in the School of Communication at The University of Akron.