Book Review: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

"I wish...to set some investigations...afloat...; and should they lead to a confirmation of my principles...the Rights of Women may be respected, it it be fully proved that reason calls for this respect, and loudly demands JUSTICE for one half of the human race."

200 hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft, the English women's rights pionner, published her immortal work: "A Vindication of the rights of Women." In it she placed much of the blame for women's inferior political, intellectual, and social status on "faulty education."

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) lived during and participated in at least two revolutions. The revolutions and reformations of the 16th and 17th centuries created a situation unparalleled in medieval times. Reason became the preferred method for settling matters.

Wollstonecraft is considered to be the first feminist philosopher. She rejects the "constraints of unquestioned tradition and spurious authority." She challenges the traditional ethical and social understanding of women.

The inferior treatment of women provides the background to Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

Vindication is about the rights of women. She thinks that women are endowed with the natural rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For all the ENLIGHTENMENT's promise, women continued to be oppressed members of society. Enlightenment thinkers believed that only men were capable of reason. Women were considered irrational. Women were degraded as persons, their liberties were restricted, and they were oppressed members of the Society.

Wollstonecraft asserts that women are fully rational but they are not helped by the system of education. Women are disadvantaged by a poor system of education that prevents women from succeding in the society.

Clark & Poortenga wrote in The Story of Ethics (2003) that Western philosophy is littered with thinkers who view women as deficient.

Wollstonecraft reminds us that "prejudicial views of persons can, under the guise of virtue, be used by those in power to reinforce and perpetuate injustice" (Groenhout & Goi).

Wollstonecraft wrote:
Reason and experience convince me that the only method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties, is to free them from all restraint by allowing them to participate in the inherent rights of mankind. Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous." (Vindication, 175)

This passage should be applied to all human beings!

I perceive that education is what we need in Africa, Middle East, and Asia in order to improve the social order. The emancipation of women is based on the right to education. Boys and girls should be schooled together and share a curriculum rich in experiential learning particularly in scientific studies and Critical thinking literature.

Wollstonecraft perceived education as improvement of the individual and improvement of the social order. The new educational paradigm which she envisioned was one based on reason and education.