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A review by caris96
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
5.0
“Asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate her faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society” (242).
One of Wollstonecraft’s central theses is that the “nature” of gender that society appeals to when prescribing gender roles is only created by these prescriptions, and thus by removing them, we uncover that human nature is not at all what we’ve assumed. Some of the gender norms that we still find necessary to deconstruct, from the taught behaviour of children to the position of women relative to men, were voiced more than 200 years ago by Wollstonecraft. It is a polemic critique of social and material conditions of the time and region (the religious and cultural institutions of which are still present in Wollstonecraft’s own perspective), and took to task turning the work of other intellectuals of the time on their heads. Overall, it’s a call for equality for women especially in institutions which, even to this day, impose double standards on gender.
One of Wollstonecraft’s central theses is that the “nature” of gender that society appeals to when prescribing gender roles is only created by these prescriptions, and thus by removing them, we uncover that human nature is not at all what we’ve assumed. Some of the gender norms that we still find necessary to deconstruct, from the taught behaviour of children to the position of women relative to men, were voiced more than 200 years ago by Wollstonecraft. It is a polemic critique of social and material conditions of the time and region (the religious and cultural institutions of which are still present in Wollstonecraft’s own perspective), and took to task turning the work of other intellectuals of the time on their heads. Overall, it’s a call for equality for women especially in institutions which, even to this day, impose double standards on gender.