The Woman's Public Speaking Handbook.

• Author: Wolter, Sarah
• Position: Book review

The Woman's Public Speaking Handbook. By E. J. Natalle and F. R. Bodenheimer. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2004; pp. iii + 169. $23.95 paper.

Natalle and Bodenheimer's The Woman's Public Speaking Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of reasons why women have been excluded from public speaking engagements, but provides little agency for changing the system from which women are excluded. Arguing that traditional public speaking textbooks do not acknowledge gender difference, the text attempts to delineate how the practice of public speaking differs for women. Hence, the introduction states three objectives of this text: "to share prescriptions for helping women become effective public speakers" (p. 2); to assist women to overcome public speaking apprehension; and to offer strategies for developing an effective public persona.

The book is straightforwardly organized. Chapter 1 discusses message preparation and the impact of gender within organizational processes. Chapter 2, which examines how a speaker relates to an audience, incorporates nontraditional audience analysis and explores the hostile audience phenomenon. Chapters 3 and 4 describe and apply basic, gender-specific delivery strategies, techniques and resources. The text begins to incorporate diverse speaking situations in Chapter 5, including "Sharing Expertise on Panels" (p. 102) and "Public Speaking in the Workplace" (e.g., reports, meetings, training) (p. 105). The final chapter treats development of a public persona. A brief epilogue provides an "action plan" for summarizing and implementing the text's concepts. Finally, "Pullout Tools" (p. 155) include forms, checklists, and templates useful in incorporating public speaking into women's personal and professional lives.

We believe that the text has two positive advantages and one significant weakness. First, in a refreshing break with tradition, it is filled with examples of powerful women famous for their speaking charisma. Women's historical exclusion from traditional realms of public speaking is consistently emphasized: "women were never meant to take on the role of public speaker. Historical records are replete with stories, quotations, and admonitions for women to be silent. Naturally, this led to the oxymoronic problem of the obliteration and objectification of woman as public speaker" (p. 114). Two versions of this problem are identified: "the first view is to obliterate women from the public platform, and the second view is...