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.
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