Dana Rubin, Speaking While Female

Dana Rubin is single-handedly giving voice to women throughout history. Dana's passion project, Speaking While Female, showcases female speakers across time and around the world, from antiquity to the present. Historically, women have not been silent, but their words have scarcely been noted in the history books. What they said was seldom valued, recorded, or remembered.

Donna is a consultant and speaker, committed to women's speech, voice, and thought leadership. She created the Speaking While Female Speech Bank to set the record straight on who actually spoke in history (hint: not just men) and because representation matters.

Her credentials are impressive. She's an award-winning journalist who graduated from Yale with honors. She's also a judge for the annual Cicero Speechwriting Awards, which recognizes outstanding contemporary speeches and speechwriters from around the world.

Speaking While Female: website: https://speakingwhilefemale.co
Linkedin: Speaking While Female: https://www.linkedin.com/company/35530892/
Instagram: @speakingwhilefemale
Twitter: @SpeakingWFemale
Linkedin: Dana Rubin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danarubin/

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/speakingwhilefemale/celebrating-womens-speech

Clara Shortridge Foltz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Shortridge_Foltz
Elizabeth I: https://speakingwhilefemale.co/war-elizabeth-1/
                         http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/elizaspeech1563.htm

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Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 0:00

Hello, my name is Anne Marie cannon and I'm the host of armchair historians. What's your favorite history? Each episode begins with this one question. Our guests come from all walks of life, YouTube celebrities, comedians, historians, even neighbors from the small mountain community that I live in. There are people who love history and get really excited about a particular time, place, or person from our distant or not so distant past. The jumping off point is a place where they became curious, then entered the rabbit hole into discovery, fueled by an unrelenting need to know more, we look at history through the filter of other people's eyes. I'm Chair historians is a Belgian rabid production. Stay up to date with us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast that is where you'll find us. I'm Chair historians as an independent, commercial free podcast. If you'd like to support the show and keep it ad free, you can buy us a cup of coffee through coffee, or you can become a patron through Patreon links to both in the Episode Notes. Hello fellow armchair historians and welcome to another edition. First of all, I'd like to say Happy Women's History Month. Having said that, I want to say I'm really excited about today's guest, Donna Rubin is single handedly giving voice to women throughout history. Donna's passion project, speaking more female showcases women speakers across time in around the world from antiquity to the present. Historically, women have not been silent, but their words have scarcely been noted in the history books. What they said was seldom valued, recorded or remembered. Now Donna is a consultant and speaker committed to women speech, voice and thought leadership. She created the speaking while female speech bank to set the record straight on who actually spoke in history. Hint, not just men. And because representation matters. Donna's consultancy is speech studio, in which she helps organizations develop their diverse talents and underrepresented voices to become recognized experts, brand ambassadors, rainmakers and role models for others coming up the pipeline. Her credentials are impressive. She's an award winning journalist who graduated from Yale with honors. She is also a judge for the annual Cicero speech writing awards, which recognizes outstanding contemporary speeches and speech writers from around the world. Donna Rubin Welcome to armchair historians.

Dana: 2:50

Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be talking to you today.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:54

I'm super excited about all the work you've been doing. So let's just get right off into it. And we'll hopefully cover all the, you know, projects that you're working on the book that's coming out all that will be wrapped into this conversation, I imagine. But what's your favorite history that we're gonna be talking about today?

Dana: 3:13

Well, I am a history nut. So I'm interested in all kinds of history. But my favorite for the last few years, my obsession has been the history of women's speech.

Anne Marie Cannon: 3:25

That's a very specific thing. How did you get into that? Like, how did you enter the rabbit hole?

Dana: 3:32

Yeah, well, it is a rabbit hole. It's a it's a very specific niche, but it's actually a very broad and wide niche. So I look at and learn about women's speech through the centuries. That is understanding, getting an understanding of when and why women were able to speak, the opportunities they had to speak in public, when they took advantage of it when they bulldoze their way past the obstacles, all the different ways that women spoke in history. And by speak, I mean, public speech. So I'm talking about speeches, and lectures and addresses. But I'm also talking about other forms of public speech, like testimony in a trial like Anne Hutchinson testimony and 1630 and her heresy trial, like, such as women who stood up and gave an oral defense in you know, in Baroque Italy. So, all the occasions when women put their voice into the public square, and you asked how I got into it, and I'll give you as concise and answer as I can, although I could talk for a long time about it. But I was very interested in a gendered look at voice that women's voice because as a speech writer and a speech coach, I became aware that it is harder it just is harder for more Are women to speak in public than men? Not all Some women do it with ease. Not all men do it with ease. Some men have trouble. But in general, I think we can make the general generalized observation that it's harder for women to speak. And I started thinking about what are the reasons for that? What are all the different, the different interplay of factors that come into creating discomfort when we put our voices into the public square. So I started looking at anthologies of speech, I wanted to see examples of women who did speak up in the past. And I pull down a volume for my shelf, it was William sapphires. Lend me your ears, iconic collection of speeches, it went into several printings, he was a speechwriter for Nixon, very well known. He used to have a column for The New York Times about oral words and language. And I adored him. I mean, I revered him, I read his column all the time on language. So I pulled down that volume. And it said, you know, these are the world's best speeches. And I looked at the table of contents, many pages long, and I just started counting. These are all the speeches by men. And these are all the speeches by women. And there were 202 speeches by men, and 15 speeches by women. And when I looked at that, I just I remember just staring at that table of contents. And I really felt like the world changed for me in that moment, because of someone who I respected so much, and had so much institutional, credibility and respect, I could only think of 15 Women's speeches in history that had made an impact. I thought, that is a major blind spot. So that's what launched me onto this project.

Anne Marie Cannon: 6:46

So how far back are we going with the speeches? And is it just in the United States? Or are we talking about other countries?

Dana: 6:55

No, it is global. It is harder for you to find speeches from other countries, because I'm limited by my language, by my language skills. But I have a speech by Hortensia is probably the oldest one I have. She was the daughter of a Roman console, in 42 BC. And she spoke, I believe in the forum and the Roman Forum. Although I don't quite understand how she did that. Because I know women weren't supposed to speak in the Roman Forum. But we had her speech, we have her words that have come down through the ages. So she's probably the oldest but I have other old speeches by women from different cultures. But of course, right up to the contemporary times, hundreds, hundreds of speeches, advocating suffrage, the woman's vote from different countries around the world, speeches, really on every topic that you can imagine every topic under the sun. Women spoke about marriage and divorce, they spoke about education, they spoke about prison reform, they spoke about sanitation, and hygiene. They spoke for war, they spoke against war, they spoke for reproductive rights and contraception, they spoke against birth control, and, you know, certainly abortion pro and a con, I mean, there were just every possible conceivable topic, women have been speaking out. And I admire so many of them, even if I don't agree with their points of view, I admire that they put their voices out into the world. Next, I want them on my site. So I do have a website. It's an archive, it's called speaking while female speech bank, and it is the world's largest archive of women's speeches.

Anne Marie Cannon: 8:37

Okay, that was my next question. So what criteria do you look for? Or does a speech have to have in it besides that it was spoken by a woman to make it into your archive?

Dana: 8:51

Well, the or the criteria are somewhat subjective, I admit that I'm the arbiter or the curator. But if it's an older speech, I put it in older meaning. Early 19th century, pretty much I put it in, because we just don't have that many examples of women, if a woman was speaking in 1830s, or 1850s, that in of itself is notable and valuable. When you get up to the 1870s and 80s and 90s. And into you know, the 20th century. There's so many speeches, it would be a, you know, a fruitless endeavor to try and find all the speeches, so I don't do that. But, you know, older speeches, yeah, I want I want to motivate women to see these speeches and to be inspired by them.

Anne Marie Cannon: 9:44

I just have this weird question that came into my head is Queen Elizabeth the first in there. Of course, she is a few because she was Yeah, powerful figure who had to rally the troops and all kinds of stuff so well,

Dana: 9:59

in fact, After you mentioned your references to one of her most famous speeches, which was to the troops at Tilbury, when the British were fighting the French and she went down to Tilbury, which was a spot in the Thames Estuary, and she actually went there to, as you put it, rally the troops, and that has gone down in history is one of the most famous speeches by women. And in fact, I think that's Beach is in William sapphires collection. So of course I have it, and I celebrate it and value it. Yeah, that's great. But she gave other speeches to a number of other speeches.

Anne Marie Cannon: 10:35

Yeah. Why this history?

Dana: 10:39

Well, I want to be relevant. And as I say, Now, as I said, I've watched so many women struggle to stand up and speak and put their ideas in the world. And it pains me, it really bothers me a great deal, because we have so many problems in the world. And we all know, the vastness of the challenges that we face and the world that we're leaving to next generations, whether its geopolitical challenges, what's going on now in Ukraine and around the world, with human rights abuses, or it's our planet, you know, the the challenges that we face in our planet, we just really need to get all our best thinking, and all our best ideas out there into the world. And if women's ideas and Women's knowledge and expertise are not there, then we're all going to be shortchanged. So in the Western world, in the United States, and in in Europe and other parts of the Western world, there are more women, educated, higher education, college degrees, graduate school degrees than men. So women have the knowledge and the expertise. But if they're not putting it out in equal measure, to their male counterparts, then we're getting shortchanged. We're not benefiting from that knowledge. And we need that knowledge. We need the best minds, the best ideas to be part of the mix. So we can all make decisions going forward that are based on the on the smartest ideas.

Anne Marie Cannon: 12:13

So you alluded to something a little earlier about why women's voices are not out there, why there aren't speeches, what are some of the things that you discovered?

Dana: 12:25

Well, I think that it's a variety of reasons that have led us to this state. I mean, I think in general, the gatekeepers of our culture, the gatekeepers of our, you know, our knowledge that gets passed on have not been interested in women's experience and did not value women's voice. So for example, let's say there was an event in the 16th century and just making this up, but a woman spoke, and man did not. Men perhaps didn't go to hear the woman speak because they didn't value it. Or if they went, they didn't write down what she wrote, because they weren't transcribing it because they didn't think it was important. Or even if they transcribed it, they didn't put it in a journal, they didn't put it in a in a newspaper or some other form of communication. So they know. It's, you know, whenever humanity started spreading knowledge, I mean, the 1500s is when the printing press, I think came about right. So when we started disseminating knowledge through our channels, we were not really that interested in disseminating what women had to say, and that that has carried through and to really, quite recently. I mean, even in the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about the fact that we don't have opposite articles, by women in the same degree to the same degree that we had men, we don't have the same number of literary critics and analysts. Until recently, there wasn't even much consciousness about the fact that men was mostly men who were doing movie reviews, and movie criticism. I mean, what is that about, if not a kind of systemic oversight on our part, that women have the knowledge to fulfill these roles and to step up and use their voices, that the women aren't doing it as much as the men and even when they are? That knowledge is not being disseminated or shared?

Anne Marie Cannon: 14:20

Could you give an example of a speech that you found most enlightening or moving? That's included in the archive?

Dana: 14:32

Yeah, sure. I mean, there's so many, I have 2500 plus speeches in the archive. It's hard for me to choose, but I'll talk about one that is one of my favorites. There was a woman in California on the West Coast named Clara Shortridge Foltz. And she had five kids and a husband who abandoned the family. So she needed to make a living and what did she do? She became a public speaker, which I love about her. She was a good speaker and she went out on the circuit as a paid public speaker. But she also wanted to be a lawyer. And at the time, she could not, she could not take the bar exam, because the bar exam was only given to white men 21 years and older. So what did she do? She and her friend, Claire Foltz. And her friend Laura de force, Gordon got together and wrote a bill and got a bill passed through the California, California Legislature, I'm pretty sure anyway, they got a bill passed, and they changed the law. So women were able to take the bar exam. But then women could take the bar exam, but they weren't admitted to law school. So she actually studied privately and did pass the bar exam. But she and her friend sued the University of California, that law was a Hastings Law Schools College of Law in San Francisco. And they sued and women were admitted. But by that time, Clara Foltz was already working full time as a lawyer and really didn't have time to go back and fulfill her dream of going to law school. So she was a lawyer, and she had a lot of criminal cases, you go to court, and she saw the extent to which the defendants in court, who were indigent, who didn't have any money were steamrolled by the prosecutors, as prosecutors had a lot of money and a lot of state support institutional support. And in our courts of law in America, we have, you know, the notion of innocent until proven guilty, and the court has a duty to protect defendants until such time as they are proven guilty. So she came up with idea of a public defender system that we should have a state sponsored government sponsored form of helping indigent people defend themselves in court. And she wrote she delivered it in a speech in 1893. At the Chicago World's Fair, and she changed the world with that speech. Because of her she introduced the idea it took a while but 30 years later, California had a public defender system and then it spread all across the country. And Clara Fultz is widely recognized as being the like the mother, so to speak of the public defender system. And there is a federal courthouse named for her a criminal courthouse in Los Angeles. And women at the University of Hastings Law School some years ago, rose up and demanded that she be given a law degree posthumously. But my small contribution to the Claire full story is I went back and found that speech, no, no one had found that speech, even Barbara Babcock, the dearly departed, Barbara Babcock had wrote a biography of Claire Foles, and couldn't find that speech. But because so much, because so much has been digitized, I was able to go back and find it. And now I champion it. And it is a beautiful and powerful speech about the difference between law and justice in our country. And how we have laws laws are fine and good. But justice is something different. And if we want to truly extend justice to all of our citizens, we need to have a way to protect the innocent in court until such time as they're proven guilty, and she is my hero for standing up and making that speech. I

Anne Marie Cannon: 18:17

love that. I now, you know, in talking to you and thinking about, you know how women have really not had the stage in history. They had to take it and they had to figure out ways to take it. And that is a beautiful example of seeing a big picture and seeing what's happening with the court system. And then to come up with the plan of action and put it into effect. And then to have that speech, where do you find the speech as

Dana: 18:45

well, it turns out, as I said, as I alluded to earlier, a lot of these old journals publications are being digitized bit by bit slowly libraries are all over the world are digitizing and putting them out there. And I can't remember exactly how I did it. But I think Barbara Babcock in her book, she referred to a phrase from it, and I took the phrase and put it into some search engines and then the law journals came up and I'm sure that had it been accessible. When Barbara Babcock wrote her book, which was just a few years ago, maybe 10 years ago or so she would have included because I spoke to Barbara she passed away of breast cancer, like a couple years ago, but I actually she was a very esteemed professor at Stanford. And she wrote this book an homage to Claire faults, and she told me that she was distressed because she'd never found a copy of that speech.

Anne Marie Cannon: 19:37

Oh, wow. Yeah, that that is great effect of the digital world is finding I think there's a lot of history to be discovered jet

Dana: 19:49

more and more every day. I know because I sometimes I look for stuff and I can't find it and then I go back like a month later and boom, there it is. And I if it had been that Easy, I would have found it a month ago. So I know that it's changing. And it's a goldmine for researchers all over the world.

Anne Marie Cannon: 20:07

Right? Yeah, definitely. What one thing do you want my listeners to remember about this history?

Dana: 20:15

I want people to understand that women's voice is powerful. There are so many forces that work against it. Criticism of the way women look, their clothes, their hair, the sound of our voice, is it too high? Is it too low? Do we go up at the end? Do we go down I mean, so many absurd criticisms of women in scrutiny of women and not real attention paid to the value of their ideas. And that is only going to change with with time. And with acculturation, that change in our culture so that we become more accustomed to women in power and women as intellectual and creative forces. So I see my archive as a small piece of that. It's just one piece of it. But I want your listeners to know that it is free, and it always will be in perpetuity. And I want women or girls all over the world, anywhere, there's free internet access, which is not everywhere. We know that but anywhere, you had free access to the internet, I want a girl and a woman to be able to go in that site and see what a powerful woman looks like, hear her voice, read her words and gain inspiration from that.

Anne Marie Cannon: 21:31

Hmm, I love that you're doing this. So let's kind of unless there's, is there anything about this history that I haven't asked you that you wanted to say? No,

Dana: 21:42

I do want your listeners to know that I'm fulfilling a longtime dream now. And I'm finally working on an anthology. Because I when I did when I started doing this research, I actually got 230 speech anthologies. In the English language. Yeah, I actually got 230 of them, going back to the 1790s. So I have quite a collection of speech pathologist. And I counted them all up to see how many were by men and how many were by women. And if you go on my website, the archive, it's speaking while female co speaking while female co you can click on the homepage and see the infographic that I put together with all of these anthologies, and how pitifully few speeches by women are included in them. So what I've done is I'm creating my own anthology of speeches, the first one, the first volume is going to be focused on American women or Unite Women in the United States. And I am going to be self publishing it and to pay for that I'm raising money for my project on Kickstarter. So I've launched this Kickstarter campaign that is taking place all the month of March, of course, we're celebrating Women's History Month now. And I want everybody to go on and take a look at the video that I did. If nothing else, chest, watch this four minute video, which is very inspiring, people really love it. And I talk about Claire folds, and other women whose voices have been ignored who we must know about. And so the Kickstarter campaign is raising the money to publish the book. And that's, that's really what I want to invite all your audience to, to take a look at and enjoy and support the campaign if they can.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:24

Well, we'll definitely link back out to that. So I was gonna kind of move on, but you already segwayed tell us about yourself. Tell us about your background. And you know, why speech writing while you're focusing on that, and you know, just Yeah,

Dana: 23:42

well, it's funny how history in retrospect, all seems to be of a piece, right? But when we're moving forward, we can't see where we're going. But I was always a word in language person, always always a writer and I became I was a history major in college. But then I became a journalist. And I love the world of history and explanations, explanatory journalism articles that set the context and help us understand why world events are taking place. What were the antecedents? How did we get where we are? Then I moved on from journalism to speech writing, I also became a speech coach, I still do that work today, speech writing and speech coaching. But that's when I really became aware of this gendered difference between men and women in the way that they communicate their knowledge to the world. So that's what led to the women's speech bank. It was really out of a sense of frustration. And let's, I mean, let's be real, I was furious. I was so angry when I realized that but looking back I can see that the roots of language and history and storytelling, explanatory I mean, all these explanatory journalism and storytelling, all these mechanisms that help us make sense of the world around us and understand The world that you know that operates as it does have always appealed to me. And I've always found the most consonants the most in, you know, in tandem keep the most kindred spirits with other writers and people who love language and words and the powerful expression of ideas.

Anne Marie Cannon: 25:21

Where can we find you? Again,

Dana: 25:24

you can find my speech bank, my women's speech archives, at speaking while female.co I don't have the.com URL, maybe one day, I'll get it the woman who has it's very nice, but she hasn't given it to me. Well, Monday, I'll persuade her. But in the meantime, it's speaking with female Co. And, by the way, shall I tell you how I got the name speaking? Well, female?

Anne Marie Cannon: 25:48

Yeah, definitely. I'd love to hear that. Well, it's a

Dana: 25:51

play on the term driving all black, of course, a few years ago, the that phrase was in currency, you know, suggests it suggested the notion that a black person is just driving down the street like anybody and gets pulled aside, right, because there's a certain prejudice against that person. So one day I opened the paper, and there was an article in The New York Times by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, they co authored an op ed, about the difficulty that women have putting their voices into the public sphere. And the headline was speaking while female, and I thought it was brilliant. I just thought it said so much, because it spoke to this very current idea of driving while black, but it was kind of cheeky. So I, I waited about a year or so. And then I checked, and they weren't using it commercially. So I applied for it. And I got the trademark for once I owned it, I started using it. And it seemed very apt for my project, that then I wrote an email to Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant and said, Hey, you guys, I love what you've done. I admire you so much. Thank you for highlighting this issue. And by the way, I've taken this phrase, and here's how I'm using it. And Adam Grant wrote me back instantly, he must have just hit the Return button and wrote me back and said, thank you. That's a brilliant idea. And I never heard from Sheryl Sandberg. So I like to think she's, I like to think she didn't get my email because she's a very busy woman. But I didn't do I didn't steal it from them, I give them credit, but they weren't using it. And under, you know, US copyright law. Someone's not using a phrase commercially, you can use it. So I'm putting it to good use, I'm putting it to good use. And I'd like to think that both of them that she would approve of it as well.

Anne Marie Cannon: 27:32

Well, even without the that explanation, it's a great, it's a great name, and it says so much and so few words.

Dana: 27:39

So if you go to the website, speaking with female.com, you will find my contact information, but also on social channels. I'm big on LinkedIn, I use LinkedIn all the time. I'm also on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, I think I have about 10 posts. So I'm not really on Instagram, but I'm going to change that soon. What else may I have a YouTube channel? You know, it's a lot for one person to keep track of. So I do them to various degrees. But the place that I was the place that I liked the most and where I really have a very supportive community and a very engaged and thoughtful community is on LinkedIn. And when I post I post almost every day about women's voices in history, I always get people who jump in and and share ideas amplify my knowledge, correct me sometimes when I make mistakes, it's very supportive community. And it's a really fun community to be part of. So I I urge your listeners who are interested to connect with me there and join in the conversation join in the fun.

Anne Marie Cannon: 28:38

Yeah, that's how we found each other, I think was through LinkedIn. Yeah, I find that Twitter is my community. And I know that there's a lot of things I could be doing with LinkedIn. And I, it's like you said, there, I'm just so overwhelmed by all the different things that I could do to promote myself in my podcast. And, you know, it's, it's just me so

Dana: 29:02

well, I'll connect with you everywhere. But I can't promise to be everywhere at the same time until I become insanely wealthy and can hire someone to do it for me. I did, by the way, just sent an email to Melinda Gates, so I have no idea if it will reach her. It's always a shot in the dark. In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say it probably won't reach her that I did want her No, no, You never, never know. I do want her to know because she has emerged as one of our strongest, most passionate advocates for women around the globe. And I admire what she's doing tremendously. And I read just recently that she's starting her own imprint, her book publishing imprint, so she puts her money where her beliefs are, and I admire that.

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:46

Oh, wow. Cool. All right, this was great. I love what you're doing. I really do. Thank you for being here today. Donna.

Dana: 29:56

Thank you. It's really a pleasure. I consider you a kindred Spirit and I'm sure that extends to your listeners as well.

Anne Marie Cannon: 30:05

Oh, thank you that there you have it. Donna Rubin and speaking while female Be sure to check out our episode notes to find out more about Donna and her passion project. Speaking of female, thanks for joining us. Have a great week.