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Lecture notes of 9 pages for the course Political Theory from Hobbes at UoW
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Intro/Prior Research Advocate for womens rights - believes women are not naturally inferior to men, but
appear to be only because they lack education
Educational system that allowed girls the same advantages as boys would result in
women who would be not only exceptional wives and mothers but also capable
workers in many professions
Both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order
founded on reason
Other early feminists had made similar pleas for improved education for women, but
Wollstonecraft’s work was unique in suggesting that the betterment of women’s status
be effected through such political change as the radical reform of national educational
systems. Such change, she concluded, would benefit all society.
o The structure of society, based on privilege and inherited property, favoured
men. Women had virtually no rights and were not allowed to vote. They were
rarely given an opportunity to use their intellects in professional, managerial,
artistic or academic roles.
o Mary Wollstonecraft believed that society was wasting its assets because it
kept women in the role of ‘convenient domestic slaves’, and denied them
economic independence. She demanded that women should be trained for
professions and careers – in medicine (not just nursing), midwifery, business,
farming, shop-keeping. She said that this would free married women from ‘the
bitter bread of dependence’ and would enable mothers and widows to live and
manage their own affairs more rationally. “I do not wish them to have power
over men, but over themselves,” she said, and maintained that “It is justice,
not charity, that is wanting in this world.”
Key Words:
-Submissive
o
Podcast 1
Crucially important thinker in englightenment
Laid foundation for womens rights
Wollstonecraft’s aim is to propose a social and political order in which all people are
treated as rational, autonomous beings capable of independence.
-Argues contemporary education given to women promotes obsession with apperance and
superfifical accomplishments like sewing, singing and inane conversation.
-Young women are indoctrinated with belief that this is the way they are meant to live their
lives.
, -Women are conditioned by society to remain uneducated and to seek marriage as a means to
security - to obtain basic needs they need to look attractive, be submissive and be good
breeders....in the hope husband will treat them well.
-Should be taught skills which will allow them to be indepednent
Natural equality and liberty for all women
-Education is fundamental to the liberation and indepedence of women
Influences
Philosophiacl underpinnings of other thinkers throughout her work
Lockean:
Agrees with idea that people are 'blank slates' that the mind can be shaped by education
(Sapiro: 1992, p.53)
-According to Locke, we are born without any prior knowledge. Our intellectual make-up is
down to our experience, our social upbringing and education. Wollstonecraft agrees with
Locke when she says: we are under the influence of the effect of an early association of ideas
(Wollstonecraft: 2009, p. 190). People can be made by their education or miseducation and
you can change the way that people are taught or teach people to be responsible and rational
citizens.
-Idea of mind being a blank slate was controversial notion at the time.
Since we have no innate qualities, our intellectual make-up is learned through habit or
education. The idea of humanity as a blank slate led Wollstonecraft to believe that there is no
justification for hierarchies and that “God has made all things right” (Wollstonecraft: 2009,
p.78).
Rousseau:
Poisitive engagement - likes his anti-elitism, commitment to egalitarianism. His idea of
people being stripped of vanity, social hierachies, pretension and falsehood is important to
her. Idea there are social conditions that we learn through experience when we enter society.
Holds that through our capacity of reason - we have the power to change these artifical
conditions
Negative engagement - big issue with his work Emile, which advocates men and women
should be educated in different ways to accomodate their physical differences. Finds his
protrayal deeply objectionable.
the whole education of women ought to be relative to men, to please them, to be useful to
them, to make themselves loved and honoured by them, to educate them when young, to care
for them when grown, to counsel and console them and to make life agreeable and sweet to
them, these are the duties of women at all times and it should be taught to them from infancy'
(Rousseau, Emile)
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