Student Worksheet

Persuasive Speeches For Empowering Women And Girls - Activity Instructions

How can you use persuasive techniques to help empower women and girls? In this activity you will think about some of the challenges that women and girls currently face and brainstorm potential solutions to these challenges. You will then explore Monroe’s Motivational Sequence and find out a video text utilises this sequence. You will then be guided to use this sequence to create your own text about empowering women and girls.

Part A: Identifying Challenges And Generating Solutions

In this activity you will use a model for structuring a persuasive speech about a solution to empower women and girls and help to address climate change. The first step is to refine your topic by exploring two challenges that girls and women around the world currently face:

Lack of access to education
Family planning

Step 1.

Begin by brainstorming some of the reasons why girls or women may lack access to education and family planning, both in Australia and around the world. You should consider social, economic, political, medical and religious factors.

Record your ideas on a piece of paper or in your workbook.

Here are some examples to get you started:

Lack of access to education

Reason

Water collection

Lack of access to school due to menstruation

Stereotypes or social values - girls not worth educating

Lack of family planning information for women

Reason

Religious and cultural values

Cost

Lack of education

Note: if you would like to find out more about any of these topics, you could use some of the following websites to conduct some research:

The World Bank
One Girl
Girl Effect
2040 Solutions
1 Million Women
Drawdown:
- https://drawdown.ecochallenge.org/challenges/women-and-girls
- https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/health-and-education

Step 2.

Take a look at the challenges you identified and for each challenge that you think of you should now suggest at least one solution. Add your ideas next to each challenge.

For example:

Lack of access to education
Reason	Solution
Water collection	Infrastructure such as wells built nearby villages, plumbing
Lack of access to school due to menstruation	Toilets and sanitary products provided
Stereotypes or social values - girls not worth educating	Campaigns, role models

Lack of family planning information for women
Reason	Solution
Religious and cultural values	Working with religious groups to find suitable solutions, education campaigns
Cost	Innovating for affordable contraceptives
Lack of education	Campaigns, role models

Step 3.

Refer to the ideas you recorded in your workbook or on a spare piece of paper and clarify and summarise your ideas in this table:

Extend yourself: Put a star next to the challenges you believe are only found in developing countries.

Note: Something further to think about - read the following information.

Improving education and family planning information for women undoubtedly benefits the lives of women and girls. How might addressing these challenges also benefit communities and our environment more broadly?

The main benefit relates to population. By improving access to education and family planning information, women are more likely to delay marriage and have fewer children. Fewer people means fewer environmental resources being used, as well as fewer resources required for food, transport, electricity, etc. Addressing a lack of education and family planning for women is an essential strategy in meeting the challenges of climate change.

You can read about the connection between girls’ education, family planning and climate change here: https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/health-and-education. You can also learn more about this by completing our accompanying activity, 2040 - Targeted Solutions for Women and Girls - Years 9 & 10.

Part B: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

Step 1.

You will now explore techniques for preparing a persuasive text.

Many persuasive texts follow a sequence known as Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. Keep in mind that not all texts follow the exact order - sometimes they can flow back and forth between steps.

Watch the following clip and use the table below to consider how Damon's text is structured and the impact on the audience. Once complete, you will need to respond to the questions in the table below. Read the questions prior to watching, and then pay attention to these points within the clip. Remember that most texts do not perfectly fit any given structure and areas of both fitting the structure and deviating from it are of interest.

Click to watch: Empowering Women and Girls (Password: 2040_EDU)

Complete this table:

Step 2. OPTIONAL

Now watch Katharine Wilkinson’s TED talk and do the same again. Katharine often moves back and forth between the problem and solution stages.

Part C: Persuasive Speech Writing

Step 1.

You will now write a persuasive speech about a solution that will empower women and girls and help to address climate change. Work through the following steps:

1. Research

Choose one challenge/solution faced by women and girls that you wrote down at the beginning of this activity to write a speech on. You may wish to undertake more research on your problem/solution. The following links will be helpful for research:

One Girl (https://www.onegirl.org.au/)
Girl Effect (https://www.girleffect.org/)
Article: Why Climate Change is not Gender Neutral (https://unfccc.int/news/climate-action-needs-gender-action)

You could also use search terms such as:

Empowering women climate change
Gender equality climate change

Once you have decided on a challenge and a solution, add them here:

The challenge I am addressing is...

The solution I am proposing is...

2. Plan

To design your speech, use the general structure of Monroe’s Motivational Sequence. There are some suggestions for information to include at each stage below, and you will find a blank version of this table underneath.

Steps of the sequence	Suggestions for information to include
Stage One: Attention How will you grab the audience’s attention?	Statistics Interesting facts Anecdotes
Stage Two: Problem/Challenge What problem will you focus on? What details will you include?	Statistics about the extent of the problem Explanation of why it’s a problem
Stage Three: Solution What is the solution?	Statistics about the effectiveness of the solution
Stage Four: Visualise the solution What is the solution? How will you help the audience imagine the solution in action?	Explanation of the effects of the solution Description and evocative language about the solution’s benefits
Stage Five: Action What steps do you want the audience to take at the end of your speech?	Short call to action

3. Write

Now, write your speech in your workbook or on a separate piece of paper. Aim for it to be 2-3 minutes long.

Step 2.

Perform your speech for your family and ask them to provide you with the feedback below:

Step-by-step feedback:

Did the opening lines catch your attention? Why/why not?
Was the ‘need’ or ‘problem’ described clearly? Did it seem like an important problem?
Was the solution clear? Why/why not?
Did the visualisation help you imagine the solution? Why/why not?
Was the action clear?

Overall feedback:

What do you think is missing from the speech?
What worked well?

Take It Further

Reflect on what you have learned, enjoyed and/or found challenging about using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to write and to analyse texts. Use the following questions to guide your reflection:

How did Monroe’s Motivated Sequence help you to structure your work?

What parts of using the structure did you find challenging or constraining?

2040 - Persuasive Speeches For Empowering Women And Girls

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