Mary Wollstonecraft and the vindication of women's rights

Abstract

This article addresses Mary Wollstonecraft's (1759-1797) critique of Rousseau's educational vision presented in his work Emile. The debate in question is a significant episode in the historic struggle for women's rights, in which Wollstonecraft demands, as a right, a comprehensive public space for women. The topic of interest is whether the author's proposal to change the paradigm from that of a domestic slave to an enlightened citizen implies recognition of moral and civic responsibility for women; and whether the path of granting dignity to women through equivalent education for both sexes necessarily entails women abandoning their formative role as educators of their children at home. Likewise, it is of interest to determine whether, in Wollstonecraft's thinking, the transformation of motherhood into a civic task and the recognition of women as rational sexed subjects generate a different vision of rationality that breaks with the male paradigm.