The figures · Thinkers

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft is a foundational figure in modern feminist political thought.

BORN 1759 CE · London, EnglandDIED 1797 CE · London, EnglandERA Enlightenment

NOTABLE CONTRIBUTION

Made one of the classic Enlightenment arguments for women's rational education and civil equality.

THE RECORD

She argued that women appeared inferior because education and institutions made them so.
Her work connected women's rights to reason, virtue, citizenship, and social reform.
Later feminist movements repeatedly returned to her as an early architect of equality arguments.