A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: How Women’s Neglected Education Impedes Gender Equality?

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: How Women’s Neglected Education Impedes Gender Equality

Gender equality is the idea of men and women receiving equal treatment in society and that one should not suffer unfairness based on their gender. Throughout history, women have fiercely fought in order to have the same rights as men. In fact, women were given the right to vote in 1918 in England although equal voting rights between men and women happened ten years later, in 1928. In Quebec, women had to wait until 1940 to have the right to vote. In Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written in 1792, she fights to promote gender equality. Her essay is considered one of the earliest feminist work known to date. The context of this period reflects traditional patriarchal societies —in other words, women have no rights as men were seen as superior to women. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the author states that education is a challenge to the status quo of women in terms of gender relations. More specifically, she believes education needs to change in order to extend equality of genders. In her essay, the author blames the way society depicts women, the way women react to pre-established prejudices about their gender and how famous authors of this period wrote about women, or lack thereof.

Mary Wollstonecraft claims that one of the challenges women have to go through in order to reach gender equality is the way they are perceived by society. Wollstonecraft claims that the society has contributed to women’s identity construction by referring to them as objects of desire. She begins by stating that physically, men are stronger than women (1507). The author says, “This is the law of nature … But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment”(1507). This passage demonstrates that the author believes that while men are physically more robust than women, this does not mean that they are superior beings. She suggests that they are not satisfied with their physical superiority as they contribute to building an image of women being more like objects of beauty one would like to possess. The author continues by stating that women, like men, are human beings and were placed on Earth to exploit their faculties and develop their virtues (1507). Wollstonecraft places the blame at men’s feet and states that they consider women as creatures. Also, the author uses rhetorical aspects to emphasize on the inconsistency between what is expected and what actually happens. She ironically addresses women by saying, “My own sex, I hope, will excuse me if I treat them like rational creatures instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone” (1508). In this passage, the author indirectly criticises society’s conception of women because as she mentions, women should be nothing more than gracious and men should treat them the same way they treat children. She also wishes to send a message to both men and women as she blames men for considering women inferior, and intentionally blames women for accepting it. The tone of her essay is very emotional and direct. Wollstonecraft combines humour and anger in order to establish a climate of rebellion. She wishes for women to have access to the same education as men. The author believes that, if women were to be educated, they would learn logic and reasoning, and realize that their situation was unacceptable. The author excuses herself for threating women as human beings rather than creatures depending on men to subside. In other words, the author shows that people are socially constructed to belong to a sphere.

In order gain equilibrium between men and women in society, Wollstonecraft says she wishes to persuade the latter to gain physical and mental strength by letting go of soft phrases and naivety, as per the author, regarding matters of the heart, for they reflect weakness (1508). In addition, Wollstonecraft believes that the reason why women act as such is due to their neglected education (1506). The author also states that women feel the will to establish themselves, and that sadly the only way to make this happen is through marriage. She claims that women are focused on being the objects of desire men want them to be due to the idealism they were forced to portray (1509). Women prioritize beauty over physical and mental strength in order to please their counterpart, because that is the only way they can aspire to grow in society. Wollstonecraft claims that this desire to please men makes them act as animals or children (1509). The author criticizes these behaviours and explains that “elegance is inferior to virtue” (1508). She continues by explaining that women are “taken out of their sphere of duties and made ridiculous and useless when the short-live bloom of beauty is over… I presume that rational men will excuse me for endeavouring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable”(1509). Once again, Wollstonecraft uses irony to apologize to for persuading women to become respectable. The author also establishes that with time, women’s beauty fades and that the latter will not matter in time, the same way an object is treated when one no longer feels the need to use it. She emphasizes that nature made men physically superior, and that they contributed in making women generally inferior on all aspects by saying, “Nature, or, to speak with strict propriety, God, has made all things right: but man has sought him out many inventions to mar the work” (1519).

Another challenge encountered by women, is the way they perceive themselves according to pre-established prejudices about their education. Abbey Ruth explains that the term education has two meanings; She says that Wollstonecraft uses the term education in a broad and a narrow way. Its broad meaning corresponds to what we consider today’s socialization (Ruth 232). The author asserts that one’s education is strongly influenced by the wider view about their place in society. She also says that “when Wollstonecraft laments the sorry state of women’s education, she means education in both senses, but her major focus is women’s socialisation or what today would be called the social construction of gender” (232). Ruth demonstrates that women’s socialization is somewhat created by the conception one has of their role in society. In a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, society imposes women to focus their interest on being pretty and feeding the desire to establish themselves by seducing men (Wollstonecraft 1509). Mary Wollstonecraft says, “And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act as such children are expected to act” (1509). The author

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