Five famous speeches by women who feared public speaking

Jacqueline Kennedy

According to numerous polls, you're more afraid of this than snakes. Or spiders. Or needles, enclosed spaces or heights. Thank goodness you're not likely to encounter any of these in combination with that chart-topping fear: public speaking.

Being a nervous or fearful public speaker isn't that unusual, but a few of the speakers in The Eloquent Woman Index had the unusual task of having to confront that fear in their very public roles. Speaking became a key part of their careers, and each of them found ways to push past their nerves to succeed. Take a look at their examples below. Could any of their techniques work for you?

1. Lady Bird Johnson prayed for smallpox before her high school graduation, so she wouldn't become valedictorian or salutatorian and have to give a speech. Now that's nervous. She didn't get sick but she did come in third, escaping the dreaded task. But her husband's vice presidency and presidency put her on stage early and often. This First Lady's 1964 whistle stop campaign tour of the southern United States put her to the test as a speaker who needed to rise above the raucous and sometimes insulting crowds, who were angry with her husband for signing civil rights legislation. One of her tips for the shy speaker: ask questions, as a way to build confidence and engage an audience.

2. Like Johnson, Jacqueline Kennedy was forced to push past her shyness to speak on behalf of her husband in her role as First Lady. During her famous 1962 televised tour of the White House, her nerves were evident; one producer remarked on her "constricted voice." But Kennedy had prepared extensively for the speech, and she managed her nerves in part by taking pauses to collect her thoughts before each question.

3. How about one more First Lady? It's difficult to imagine Eleanor Roosevelt as a shy speaker, after she delivered so many eloquent remarks on everything from African American civil rights to women in the workplace to her 1949 remarks on the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. She was also the first presidential spouse to hold press conferences and speak at a national political convention. For Roosevelt, intense bouts of writing and practice were key to overcoming her fear of public speaking.

4. Princess Diana was so terrified of public appearances when she first became part of the British royal family that the press dubbed her "Shy Di." But she knew there was no way she could avoid these appearances, and she worked with several speaking coaches to become more comfortable with public speaking. Her coaches noticed that she spoke best when she allowed herself to sound more conversational, and to speak from the heart. By the time she gave this 1997 presentation on the international ban on landmines, she had found a way to let her passionate interest guide her through a public event.

5. We've highlighted Rachel Carson's speeches as a scientist, but she also was a notably shy speaker--so much so, one of her biggest speeches was noted in her obituary as one she'd accepted despite her fears. She called herself "scared to death" before some of her earliest environmental talks, but she also used her passion for her subject to propel her into speeches she might have otherwise avoided.

The fearless freelance writer Becky Ham contributed this post.

If you found this post useful, please subscribe or make a one-time donation to help support the thousands of hours that go into researching and curating this content for you. 

London notebook: Lessons from speakers and speechwriters at #ESN2013

The view from lunch with a speaker

When you say "yes" to an invitation to speak, you hope it embraces you in return, and that's exactly what happened on my trip to London last week to give the closing keynote at the International Speechwriting Conference. As one whose biggest motivators are intellectual challenges and creativity, this conference was a perfect fit for me. I have weeks of great blog posts to come, but wanted to share these notes from my trip, particularly as they relate to my topic of women and public speaking. I think it's better than a handout:

• Before the conference, I had lunches with two TEDMED speakers with whom I worked this spring: Pritpal Tamber, MD, and artist Sue Austin, both based in the UK. It was lovely to get encouragement and advice from them, in a bit of reverse coaching.
• For me, the conference began with a social dinner for conferees at London's Frontline Club, where club member and Deloitte speechwriter Caroline Johns took the time to show me the preserved cellphone, bundle of Deutsche marks and pack of cigarettes that kept a bullet from killing one of the club's founders. We spoke of club member Marie Colvin, the US/UK war correspondent killed in an attack in Syria last year. Colvin's London eulogy for fallen war correspondents is in this blog's Famous Speech Friday series.
• At the conference, "Big ideas don't need big words" hit me like a lightning bolt in the first talk of the day from UK speaker coach Peter Botting. Make that an elegant, crisp bolt of lightning: I've said much the same thing to the scientists and big thinkers I work with, but perhaps not so simply or well. 
• It's like they knew I was coming: Even as we started the meeting, Reg Starkey, creative director of 

  

  From The Guardian

  QUMIN, shared this article from the Guardian about a new study showing that just 18 percent of the presenters over age 50 on UK television are women. When I described in my talk the New Yorker cartoon that features a five-man panel, with the moderator saying "The subject of tonight’s discussion is: why are there no women on this panel?", Reg kindly gave me a copy of another good one from Punch: "That's an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it." The cartoons underscore this as a top-of-mind issue right now. We may not know how to solve it, but we're talking about it.
• My theme was "The Lady Vanishes," looking at the various ways, ancient and modern, in which we silence women speakers or render them invisible. I didn't think this was a problem myself until other speechwriters and coaches kept asking "Can you find more recent examples than Eleanor Roosevelt?" Why can't we name more examples of famous women speakers? was the mystery I posed to the group. The reasons range from forbidding women to speak outright and shaming them publicly to discourage speaking, to reducing them to their wardrobes. Primarily, though, we just keep selecting few or no women speakers for our conference programs. I shared hopeful signs that audiences (via Twitter) and conferences (via quotas) are publicizing the lack of women speakers. There's much speechwriters can do to help, including making sure their speeches get published so people like me can find and share them in places like The Eloquent Woman Index--and so more women can have female speakers as role models, as new research shows that seeing strong women speakers has a positive impact on young women's public speaking skills.
  
• I cited two books for which many in the audience wanted references: Kathleen Hall Jamieson's Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking, is an excellent analysis of television's impact on political speeches, with perhaps the best one-chapter recap of the history of women and public speaking. Cecilia Ford's Women Speaking Up: Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Meetings,is the source of the research review showing men's and women's negative views of women who speak up, which may be one reason women turn down speaking gigs when invited. 
• Wardrobe as weapon: My points on reducing women speakers to their wardrobes provoked lots of discussion. I promised to share this article on Margaret Thatcher, criticized for being a strong, even overbearing leader, but among the most feminine of dressers--and even then, she saw wardrobe as a weapon. I heard the views of some that they'd like Hillary Clinton better "if she'd just put on a dress," something I don't hear in the US, after I shared this recent research on how media coverage focusing on a woman politician's wardrobe may predict her losing the election campaign. Smart students of rhetoric Guy Doza and Layla Claridge were among those staffing the conference, and Layla shared this clip of London Mayor Boris Johnson, who has widely remarked-upon fashion issues of his own, opening London Fashion Week.
• "Women bring different ideas to a program," were the wise words of conference organizer Brian Jenner. Women speakers were one-third of this meeting's roster. I was honored to share the mic with Martha Leyton of Creativity Works; Annelies Breedveld-Smit, speechwriter for Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the Netherlands' first female minister of defense; and Edmee Tuyl, a ballerina-turned-speaker-coach from The Hague who coached us to use movement and gesture to express words, an inventive exercise.  "A speech should be to the speaker as music is

  

  Speechwriters dancing their words.

  to the dance," she told us. 
• Disparate views: No smart speaker expects complete agreement in the audience. After I told him about this incident in which a female speaker was subjected to live comments on Twitter from men in the audience speculating what it would be like to "do her," Charles Crawford neatly demonstrated in his blog post on my talk some of the blame-the-victim backlash against strong women speakers, writing "You feminists helped create the 'anything goes' morality-free pornographied Western world we now have. Accept your share of responsibility for that." As Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again." Speaker coach Celia Delaney blogged about my talk and shared some of her own experiences with that same problem as a woman speaker and organizer, quite a different view. 
• Keep an eye out for guest posts:  How could I put myself in a roomful of speechwriters and not ask for guest posts, or recommendations on famous speeches by women for the blog? I am gratified by the responses. Annelies Breedveld-Smit shared with me this video of her minister at an earlier time in her career, standing up at age 30 against a US proposal in the EU Parliament, and getting a standing ovation--a great example I'm glad to have and share. Peter Botting shared this International Women's Day tribute to his mother with me, as well as insights about women speakers from Africa and Asia--I think I counted seven potential blog posts in all the ideas he shared.  Max Atkinson shared his own post on Are Labour's leading women better speakers than Labour's leading men?, with some fine examples, and we're on a hunt for speeches from the late Member of Parliament Barbara Castle. He also shared this speech by Shirley Williams, 83, longtime British politician and professor at Harvard, on Do women make good political leaders? It's long, but worth a listen:

I don't know if this constitutes going into the belly of the beast, but on my last night in London, I was treated to dinner at London's most conservative club--one which did not admit women as full members until the 21st century--and shown the spot at the foot of the stairs where "cads" used to lollygag to catch sight of whatever might be seen below the hem of ladies' skirts as they went up the stairs. This earned it the name Cad's Corner, and prompted a rule that women must use the lift in lieu of the stairs (why should the men have to change their behavior?). I am told Margaret Thatcher, herself only an honorary member while Prime Minister, laughed at the rule and stepped up the staircase. The cad in question on the night I was there has unofficially protested my tweet recording the incident:

On my last night in London, swept away for dinner at the Carlton Club, and a look at Cad's Corner there, with an actual cad in tow. Lovely!
— Denise Graveline (@dontgetcaught) May 17, 2013

My favorite comment of the week about my own talk has to be one from a woman who wrote privately to say, "I especially liked the way you presented your story. Powerful, sure of yourself, standing there...I don't know if this is just something all Americans seem to be born with, but with you it worked so well. Not a 'trick', just a strong person who knows what she's talking about. It honestly made me feel more powerful, just seeing you do that." And if that isn't a case for getting more women on programs, I don't know what is.

Finally, there's another International Speechwriting Conference coming up in September in Brussels. Brian Jenner is a thoughtful conference organizer, and if this session was any indication, you'll find the September conference loaded with great content and smart people with whom to network. I'm thankful to have had this plum speaking slot at the spring conference, and am already plotting a return visit.

If you found this post useful, please subscribe or make a one-time donation to help support the thousands of hours that go into researching and curating this content for you. 

The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

I'd love to see you along with the readers who are fans of The Eloquent Woman on Facebook. That's where you can see these good reads, resources and ideas from other sources, in addition to posts from the blog. But I'm also sharing those finds right here, from the week just past, just in case you missed them:

• Back-pocket help for speakers: Any of us might need this handy list of 14 ways to be fearless.
• Negotiating is tough. Here's a guide to when to use your heart and when to use your head in negotiations.
• About the quote: This fiery gem from author Ursula Leguin originally came from a commencement speech, and you can find more like it on my Pinterest board of great quotes by eloquent women.

If you found this post useful, please subscribe or make a one-time donation to help support the thousands of hours that go into researching and curating this content for you. 

13 famous human rights speeches by women from The Eloquent Woman Index

We've already rounded up famous speeches by women about voting rights, but women are frequent speakers on human rights of all kinds. Here's a baker's dozen of speeches on a wide range of rights--and wrongs--by women who've inspired us from the mid-19th century to this century, listed here in chronological order so you can see the progression:

1. Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech is one of the most frequently quoted speeches about the rights of women and of women of color, yet even its title may have been added later by others altering her words. Even so, it's an inspiring view of human rights from the perspective of the person trampled upon.
2. Clara Barton testified before Congress about the horrors she witnessed at the Civil War prisoner of war camp at Andersonville. An unusual speaking role in a time when women rarely spoke in public, she drew honest and graphic attention to the rights of prisoners of war.
3. Women's rights to birth control were Margaret Sanger's campaign in the 1920s, and for her efforts to speak out on this issue, she was arrested and ignored and fought. Her focus was the children born "unwelcome, unwanted, unprepared for, unknown," a stirring bit of alliteration.
4. Margaret Chase Smith stood up for freedom of speech in her "Declaration of Conscience," a forceful attack in the U.S. Senate against fellow Senator Joseph McCarthy's famous "witch hunts" targeting suspected Communists. Describing his chilling effect, she said, "Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others."
5. Eleanor Roosevelt gave dozens of speeches on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a document for which she created an international consensus. I've got the speech where she described that process, along with video of one of her many talks on this important and seminal work.
6. Betty Friedan used her final speech as president of the National Organization for Women to call for women to go on strike in 1970. And they did, with 50,000 women taking to the streets in New York City alone. "Don't iron while the strike is hot" was one slogan.
7. Phyllis Schlafly took the opposing view on women's rights, declaring What's Wrong with Equal Rights for Women? Her contention: Women in America had never had it as good as they did in the 1970s. Not the prevailing view, but a forceful speech.
8. Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi gave her famous "Freedom from Fear" speech in 1990, noting how oppressors use fear to control people, and how fear of losing power corrupts leaders. She was placed under house arrest to silence her for 15 of the 21 years following this famous speech.
9. While First Lady, Hillary Clinton declared "women's rights are human rights" at a UN Conference on Women in Beijing. It took Roosevelt's work a step further, and it's far and away the most popular Famous Speech Friday post on this blog, proving it resonates even today.
10. Lady Gaga stormed the Rome Europride festival with this speech on gay rights. For Gaga, it was a more formal speaking effort in front of a massive open-air audience, and a forceful and eloquent defense of LGBT rights.
11. A YouTube video of Manal Al-Sharif driving a car in Saudi Arabia was a viral sensation because driving is not among the rights of women in that nation. It prompted her detention, but that didn't stop her from speaking out. In this 2011 speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum, she explains the more than two-decade fight to gain the right to drive.
12. When actress Sally Field spoke at the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner in 2012, it was in her role as the mother of a gay son. She was honored as a parent standing up for gay rights, and used her platform for a funny, passionate and heartfelt plea to others.
13. Washington State Representative Maureen Walsh also spoke out for gay rights in debate on a bill about gay marriage rights in her state. The parent of a lesbian, she surprised the assembly by speaking in deeply personal terms about her hopes and dreams for her children and her support for their rights.

If you found this post useful, please subscribe or make a one-time donation to help support the thousands of hours that go into researching and curating this content for you. 

Working metaphors throughout a message: @rosannecash & @ivanoransky

When I'm coaching speakers who want to use an analogy or a metaphor, most of the time, they spend a lot of time thinking about the metaphor--and then toss it away in a moment. It's a one-liner, a clever riposte, a throwaway line, sometimes.

I much prefer to find ways to work the metaphor or analogy all the way through a talk or presentation. Not to beat it to death in a heavy-handed way, mind you, but to get the full use of it. It may seem like an intellectual exercise, but sometimes, working your way through a metaphor or analogy in a thorough way will help a speaker see holes in her argument. Analogies are useful for this purpose when you use them as a logical argument, and both analogies and metaphor can help speakers find a path toward a stirring and memorable speech. Our minds like to look for patterns, so when you work that analogy or metaphor all the way through a speech, I can almost guarantee its success rate in terms of audiences remembering what you said.

Listening again recently to a 2009 Fresh Air interview with singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, I found a great example to share with my trainees as a model: her recording of the classic country song Sea Of Heartbreak, which features lyrics by Hal David and great harmonies from fellow vocalist Bruce Springsteen. The song begins this way:

The lights in the harbor/Don't shine for me/I'm like a lost ship/Adrift on the sea. 

Sea of heartbreak/lost love an' loneliness/Memories of your caress/so divine I wish/you were mine again, my dear/I am on this sea of tears/Sea of heartbreak. 

How did I lose you?/Oh, where did I fail?/Why did you leave me/Always to sail?

The song comes from Cash's album The List, and in the interview transcript, where Terry Gross asks Cash why she chose to record the song, Cash says:

It's kind of a perfectly constructed country song. And it was on the list, so you know that gave me permission. And it embodies that longing that is in so much of country music really, really well, and beyond that, it takes a metaphor and carries it to the very end without breaking that narrative about the metaphor, without becoming kitschy, which a lot of songs do. And that's kind of perfect to me. And it's also - it makes it a bit of a period piece because you don't hear many modern songs that do that. And there's also some language in it that's not modern, you know, when he says divine and my dear. These are kind of old-school ways of talking, and I really enjoy that. So it was like stepping into a period piece. At the same time, it has the hallmark of every great song, which is that it transcends time. It has a timeless quality to it, and it feels very modern.

I think some of that timeless quality comes from a metaphor or analogy that's so recognizable, so reflective of real-life experience and imaginings that it resonates strongly with audiences over time--and that's why speakers should think about working a metaphor or analogy all the way through a speech or presentation.

Here's another example: Reporter Ivan Oransky, who spoke at TEDMED last year, uses the baseball movie Moneyball to explain the trend of diagnosing "preconditions," saying that medicine's looking for preconditions in the erroneous ways scouts used to look for good pitchers in baseball. He works it throughout the talk, explaining the link at the start, using a three-strikes analogy midway and bringing it home, so to speak, by tossing a baseball throughout the talk.


Cash herself is a prolific writer of prose in addition to lyrics, and you may enjoy her book Composed: A Memoir. Do you work your metaphors and analogies all the way through your speeches? If you're confused about the differences between metaphors, analogies and similes, look here.

If you found this post useful, please subscribe or make a one-time donation to help support the thousands of hours that go into researching and curating this content for you. 

The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

Readers who are fans of The Eloquent Woman on Facebook see these good reads, resources and ideas from other sources there, in addition to posts from the blog. You can keep up with the pack right here, with the finds I shared in the week just past:

• Around the water cooler, Hello Ladies blog is finding that Sheryl Sandberg's  is making it easier for women to speak up at work about gender issues.
• Strike a pose, but make it a confident one. Here's another look at how a confident stance helps lower stress and boost confidence, two things every speaker needs.
• Get out those pictures of yourself speaking: Research shows that young women do better at public speaking if they can just see a photo of a prominent woman public speaker. We can all be role models in this way.
• Practice makes...: In You play like you practice, you can borrow from a sports metaphor that could extend to your speaking. Are you practicing in the way you mean to speak?
• Keep your eye on this commencement speech: Spelman College has selected twins Kirstie and Kristie Bronner as its co-valedictorians.
• About the quote: Aung San Suu Kyi's "Freedom from Fear" speech pinpointed the emotion that undermines people under the scourge of power. Read the Famous Speech Friday post on this wonderful speech here.

If you found this post useful, please subscribe or make a one-time donation to help support the thousands of hours that go into researching and curating this content for you.