Ethos

According to Aristotle (you know, the guy who came up with this whole ethos-pathos-logos stuff), ethos has to do with whether or not the speaker is perceived by the audience as credible. Even though we weren't graduating from Mills College in 1983, we can still take a pretty good guess as to the extrinsic and intrinsic ethos Ursula Le Guin might've used in her speech.

Extrinsic ethos has to do with the character, expertise, education, and experience of the speaker. Like, if you were actually in that audience, what about Le Guin would make you want to trust what she says? What does she bring to the table right off the bat? Well, she's got a ton of credentials that establish her as an expert in this particular field: namely, she's a woman. But she's not just a woman, she's a successful woman: a famous author of sci-fi novels, which has traditionally been a career firmly in the purview of men. So when it comes to speaking on sexism in society and particularly academia, Le Guin most likely knows a few things.

Her intrinsic ethos has to do with the language and attitude she adapts during her speech. Although we don't have it on tape, we can only assume this address went down in history because she spoke with conviction, with authority, and without much hesitation. But, more importantly, her word choice is significant: in a room (mostly) full of women, she chooses to use the pronoun "we", grouping her with her audience and making sure they know that their struggle is a common one:

Well, we're already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded form, alien to, the self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So that's their country; let's explore our own. (40-42)

This pretty much seals the deal on her being authentic and experienced in the subject matter, and it also leads into the other form of rhetoric that Le Guin uses pretty heavily in the address.

Pathos

Pathos is the attempt to engage an audience's emotions, and Le Guin is a master of the technique. You'd be pretty hard-pressed to listen to this speech in a room full of women, or anywhere for that matter, and not feel inspired, or angry, or even a bit sad about the state of women's rights.

In 1983, when she gave the speech, equal pay for equal work was just beginning to be a catch phrase in the feminist movement. (How sad is it that we still hear the same cry today, decades later?) Or maybe what you take from it has to do with the impassioned appeal to establish a place for women where their voices are heard on the same frequency as men's, and are moved to "speak as a woman" in public yourself. Maybe you feel like she's making a big deal out of nothing, and is exaggerating the state of gender equality.

Whatever your reaction to this speech is, we can guess you feel pretty strongly about it: and that's pathos. She taps into the roots of frustration, and empathy, and injustice, and does it in such a way that (most of us) find ourselves agreeing with her.

Logos

Even though the speech is emotional and filled with metaphorical imagery, Le Guin also uses a pretty logical approach. She's basically saying, "Men have had all the fun up until now (lists reasons 1, 2, and 3, etc.) so it's our turn. Let's do things our way for once."

Her arguments make sense—especially to a room full of women graduates. When she talks about how women have been relegated to the "shadows" of life, she lists professions that have historically been in the male domain:

All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can't play doctor, only nurse, can't be warriors, only civilians, can't be chiefs, only Indians. (57)

The people in the audience were probably nodding along with her as she made her points, and that right there is logos.