Originally published in 1792, by British writer Mary Wollstonecraft in 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' is seen as one of the first great feminist tracts.
Women rely on men for financial support. + Women are educated only to please men.
Women learn to rely on their sexual allure to win a man’s support.
Respectable women who do not exploit their sexual allure
cannot gain a man’s support but do not have
the education to support themselves.
"The most respectable women
are the most oppressed"
Wollstonecraft’s proposals for the education and emancipation of women were largely overlooked in her lifetime, and for a time after her death she was better known for her unconventional lifestyle than her ideas. However, later campaigners—such as Emily Davies, who set up Girton College for women at the University of Cambridge in 1869—were strongly
influenced by her ideas. Change was nonetheless slow to come—it was more than 150 years after the publication of A Vindication that the University of Cambridge finally offered full degrees to women.
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