My Rhetorical Action Plan

A plan is only as good as those who see it through..

Alejandro Escamilla. "Left handed person writing while wearing a wrist watch". 5-19-13 via Wikipedia. Public Domain.

Audience...
I think my audience will know something about the topic, or will at least have heard of it before. However, I don't think many of them will have a complete understanding of its significance or depth. I'm confident that many of the members of my audience will want to make the situation better because they were raised to believe in doing the right thing. But again, I think some of my audience (specifically the women) will be more inclined to make this change happen since they are the ones directly affected by the gender gap. I think the most persuasive research will demonstrate that the gender gap is indeed a real problem and then illustrate its magnitude through statistics. The hope is that these numbers will be impressive enough that my audience recognizes the fact that change is absolutely necessary. Graphs will definitely be useful in showing how the gender gap has developed and explaining how progress has been made but we haven't ever really reached equality. The overall purpose here is that my audience is reading to get a better understanding of the gender gap, it's progression over time, and what can be done to stop it.

Genre...
I think my piece will be a persuasive essay mixed with research. My goal is to start out with the research part to show what the gender gap is and why is matters, and then the persuasive part will take over when I try and express why and how we should work to change it. I think it will be fairly easy to hit all three rhetorical appeals because this issue affects us in almost every way. Ethos is already there because ethically, gender equality is the right thing and there are arguments everywhere that I can pull from. Pathos is also fairly easy to hit because I can tell a story about someone that my readers will empathize with, maybe a mother figure working hard that is missing out on tens of thousands of dollars a year because of the gender gap. Finally, my appeal to logos will be that closing the gender gap will help everybody make more money and live a happier life. I think graphs fit nicely within the research genre so that's what I'll probably go for.

Responses/Actions...
After reading my piece, what I really want is for my audience to start having conversations about the gender gap with the people they know. It sounds simple, but awareness is the first step when it comes to solving complicated problems like these because people won't try to solve a problem that they don't know about. Additionally, if they hear that their friends care about this as well then that will make everyone more likely to get on board and start taking the necessary steps to solving the problem. Unfortunately there isn't some magic button that someone decides to press that will immediately raise women's pay. But what we can do, as a society, is show that the gender gap isn't something we support, and then patronize more and more businesses that give women a fair shake. In a perfect world, that's what would happen after people read my piece.