Womens' Speeches Compare/Contrast

Over the years women have been treated like second class citizens. Due to women like Sojourner Truth, Aung San Suu Kyi  Benazir Bhutto and other, changes in the lives of women have been made. Because of things like the appeals made, claims used, etc.  the speeches of  Benazir Bhutto, Sojourner Truth and   are different and similar in many different ways.

The speeches of Sojourner Truth, Benazir Bhutto and Aung Sang Suu Kyi are similar in a couple different aspects. First and foremost they all use religion as support for their arguments. For example, Suu Kyi says “The Buddhist PAVARANA ceremony at the end of the rainy season retreat was instituted by the Lord Buddha, who did not want human beings to live in silence ‘like dumb animals’." Bhutto in her speech “Equality and Partnership” says that “The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) himself married a working woman. And the first convert to Islam was a woman, Bibi Khadija.” Truth, in “Ain’t I a Woman exclaims “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman!”  Also, Bhutto and Suu Kyi both claim that it’s up to women to change their situation. This can be seen when Suu Kyi states in “The Struggle for Life and Dignity”, “They made it possible for me to make a small contribution to this great celebration of the struggle of women to mould their own destiny and to influence the fate of our global village.” Bhttto echoes this idea when she says “Let us remember the words of the German writer, Goethe: ‘Freedom has to be re-made and re-earned in every generation.’ We must do much more than decry the past. We must change the future” in her speech. Finally, another similarity is that Suu Kyi and Bhutto mention conflict as a source of women’s’ problems. Two of the important conflicts mentioned are by Suu Kyi when she says “It is want that has driven so many of our young girls across our borders to a life of sexual slavery where they are subject to constant humiliation and ill-treatment” And Bhutto when she says “All over the world women are subjected to domestic violence.” These are some of the pieces that bind the speeches together.

Just as there are many similarities, there are also many differences in the three speeches. A very apparent one is the fact that Sojourner Truth says that men are responsible for women making changes while Bhuto and Suu Kyi say that women are the ones responsible for changing their status. This can be seen when Sojourner says (About women) “And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.” There is also a disparity in the qualities the women extol. For example, Truth extols the qualities of eating like a man, working like a man and being strong in general,      while Suu Kyi  in her speech extols the qualities of  being verbal, nurturing and teacher like, believing that women can use them to their advantage. These are some basic differences in the speeches.

Today women have a better place in this world. While speeches like Benazir Bhutto’s “Equality and Partnership”,  Aung San Suu Kyi’s  “ The Struggle for Life and Dignity” and Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” sometimes use different tactics in their speeches, they just as easily coincide and make the same point that women should, and can be free. That, at the end of the day makes all three women and their amazing speeches iconic.