Summary Of A Vindication Of The Right Of Women By Mary Wollstonecraft

The gender roles and relations for the majority of European history were determined by men superiority over women in all classes of society. For thousands of years, women lived only within the domestic realm, where their only duties were cooking, washing, cleaning and child raising. While men were obliged to provide shelter, food and other necessities to women. Thus, traditional gender roles imposed unequal economic, political and legal rights. From the eighteenth century, the traditional gender roles started to improve towards more gender equal society, particularly through the medium of literature. During the age of enlightenment, women started to participate in the public sphere by taking an advantage of new intellectual trends - the salon,
where educated females along with men were discussing the enlightenment philosophers ideas. As a result, women were an active participant in French Revolution fighting for their legal rights. By the nineteenth century, industrial revolution brought females to the workplace along with men. Later on, the total ideology of “feminine” and “masculine” was revised by existentialist philosophers. Consequently, since the enlightenment, the most significant change in gender relation was the emancipation of women in the public realm which led to the cultural, economic and political development of the society.
Firstly, it is important to understand the concept of women emancipation in the public realm. Emancipation of women occurred at various level: 1) on the political level - through the acquisition of equal legal rights and opportunities with men; 2) on the economic - through women participation in workplace outside the household; 3) on the social or cultural - through the recognition of the value of the female personality, the reflection of one's own social and bodily experience, the acquisition of skills and experience of behavior. In all of these areas, women were for a long time inferior to men or even had no/limited access. I found that public sphere connects all spheres where women emancipation occurred. It is important to mention that cultural, economic, and political progress of Europeans led to women emancipation and vise-verse. Moreover, in most case political, cultural and economic development intertwine with each other, thus I will just follow the chronological order of the events of a women emancipation. Firstly, the cultural progress of European society has led women into the public sphere of life. The enlightenment idea that society can develop not only scientifically, but also morally and culturally has led to the reassessment of the entire civilization process. This reassessment has introduced the idea that women also have their place in culture as well as men, they can change along with changing times. Perhaps, that is the reason why the active participants of the French salons were women by being a host of the intellectual and social exchange in the eighteenth century. The salons provided a place where Enlightenment ideas against the Ancient Regime could be discussed. Women participated in the salons in order to reshape their educational and intellectual needs. As in the example in Persian letters by Montesquieu, the Rica writes to his Persian fellows that “a few days ago I attended a supper party in the country, given by some women…”, where the notion that party was held by women appeared.
However, Montesquieu did not abandon the idea that women in Europe were discriminated, especially in regard to the Persian women.
Moreover, most enlightenment philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a patriarchal vision of women’s role in the society. In his book Emile: or in Education, he insisted that women should take an active part only in the family by raising their children, but they should not participate in a public realm of the life. Still, the enlightenment thinkers idea that all men should have an equal rights despite their class raised the question of women rights as well. Thus, Mary Wollstonecraft’ s in “A Vindication of the Right of Women” extended the critical analysis of her male fellow enlightenment philosophers to the women position. She argues that the “divine right of husbands” should be treated in the same way as the “divine right of the kings”. She constantly disputes the point of view of Rousseau, which limits the role of women by revealing the inconsistency of their arguments. Wollstonecraft, for example , argued that simply allowing women to have a proper education would enable them to contribute to the improvement of society, especially through their influence on children.
On the other hand, in 1791 the French constitution denied women rights to vote. In that respect, Olympia de Guiz prepared for the National Assembly the Declaration of the Rights of Women and a Citizen, which demanded recognition of full social and political equality of
women. However, the Guiz’s activity was banned and she was ent to the guillotine. In 1795, the women of France were forbidden to appear in public places and at political meetings, and in 1804 the Emperor Napoleon issued a decree declaring that the woman had no civil rights and was in the custody of the man.
Women emancipation was not very successful during the French Revolution, but in England, which forestalled a revolution by democratizing the State, women aristocrats were in a privileged condition which enabled them to fight successfully not just for themselves but also for their bourgeois and working class. The English “blue-stockings” joined the fight for democracy and universal suffrage. Thus, by the nineteenth-century women were pulled into the urban industrial workforce in large numbers. Speaking of the women’s rights in the workplace, the females gained very little from the opportunity to work in factories. Although at that period they were almost exclusively employed and even outnumbered men in factories, their wages were smaller than that of the males, whereas the work hours and conditions were equal. This can hardly be called “equality”, especially excluding the maternity leave and any care for the health of pregnant women.
In addition, a significant number of women were behaving in a way that women had an ability to do respected by men, thus contradicting to the idea that women were inferior.
And a number of women were writing to that effect. For instance, existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir insisted that women are socially assumed to be less than man and defined as a womb, an ovary. Her work “The Second Sex” was the starting point for redefining the word of «feminine» and «masculine». Moving away from feudal values (military skills) and towards bourgeoises values (thought, understanding how the world worked). By stressing the value of ordinary work for men, it was easier for all to see that women were already doing ordinary work. By stressing mental work instead of muscular military skills, it was easier to see that women had an ability to do mental work. By stressing the importance of the senses and the possessions, it was easier to see that both sexes had them and that women had an important role in their proper
employment.
Beneath this change, by the early twentieth century women had become an integral part of capitalistic industrialization; especially as clerical staff or factory workers, they were by now an essential part. As a result, Germany and other major Western countries introduced the vote for women after the first World War. Yet in most European countries full legal equality had not been achieved until well into the latter half of the century.
To conclude, the path to a “big shift” in gender relation, that is, to the emancipation of women in Europe, was not direct; on the contrary, it was complex and tortuous. First, the enlightenment era inhibited the development of women's skills, capabilities, consciousness, and ambition. In obtaining an education, work, and gaining independence over a woman, men prevailed, thus, self-determination depended on them. However, the liberal ideology of the human equality and freedom gradually became the basis that led women into political, culture and economic aspect of public life. In other words, women of that era realized the importance of the ideology of separate spheres and began to exploit it as never before: they used the principles of respected man and turned it to the discourse of women legal right to achieve power in political and social life. The women’s emancipation movement pointed out that legal equality for women is by no means the same thing as their factual equality in the fields of culture, economy, and politics. The fact remains that in twenty-first century’s Europe full equality for women is still a far way off – and as for other parts of the globe, well.