The Reading Warehouse

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote 'A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women' in 1792, partly in response to the French 'Rights of Man' and their 'progressive' suggestion that women should be educated - but only until the age of eight She makes an impassioned plea for equality on the basis of three main points: women are born with the same capacity for reason and self-government as men; virtue should have equal definitions between both sexes; and gender relations must be based on equality. The sexes are essentially similar and their relative roles merely social constructs. Her thesis raised a storm of protest at the time, but she has come to be seen as one of the founders of modern Feminism.